Discoveries from Hungary World Cinema

the third part of "The Philosophy of Horror" series

Kata, a member of the national rhythmic gymnastics team, is exposed to extreme coaching techniques. The pressure is building, and the finals are near.

One school year in an experimental school in socialist Hungary.

A cleaning-obsessed raccoon wants to turn the world into a clean white world.

This is a stop motion film made by Hanna Carlson, Milán Kopasz, Maja Szakadát and Nadja Andrasev as our fifth semester project at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. The dialogue in this film has no actual meaning, it is self-created gibberish.

What makes a boy a man? A film about childhood, family and growing up.

The world of online dating becomes a site for pleasures, fantasies, and tragedy in LOG IN.

The corpulent and ageing Ivicz, once an excellent baker, works as a deliverer now. He lives alone. At the weekends following the toilsome weekdays he is the boss. He regularly travels to the country, to work as the incorruptible referee of third class national soccer games.

Experimental short animated film by Péter Molnár

A handsome new guest arrives at Nelly’s place on a seemingly ordinary Tuesday. They instantly hit it off but she soon finds out that she’s in for a surprise.

Mária, a 55-year-old plastic surgery addict and lonely nail technician, one day finds her young love, Kalman, on Tinder. Soon they arrange a meeting, but because of her disfigured face, he has no idea that she is about to go on a date with her former lover. Mary does her best to keep her true identity hidden and to appear as perfect as possible in her new look.

A never told Central-European journey of exploration, discovering the human being behind the emblematic genius we all know around the world.

Karesz's mother, a weaver who was widowed at an early age, is determined to raise her son to be a civil servant, but Karesz refuses to live up to expectations. First he drops out of high school, then of office work. He also becomes disillusioned with the masked world, and love does not complete his life. Slowly, he gets lost in the complexities of growing up...

A mother's constant grumbling about her daughter-in-law's dish poisons her son's marriage bit by bit.

A teenage girl accidentally discovers the daily humiliations her father has to endure in order to ensure a carefree life for his family.

Judit kills her first child because the father left them. She returns to a previous suitor, Simon. Each year their child dies. The rabbi says this happens because she killed her first child and forbids her to kiss her baby till it gets married.

Underrated in light of its current (February 4, 2007) IMDb score of 6.4, this film reminded me of what Joseph Heller's 'Something Happened' could look like if a film was to be made out of it. Our middle-aged character's life is in a fragile balance at the start and soon that balance will, of course, be disturbed. Even without much in the way of drama at first, an at times nightmarish reality intermingles with nightmares, and, typically for a movie from this region, state bureaucracy and the absurdities of a semi-legal order play a role in moving developments along. So what is it that awaits our hero down the informal road he is officially sent? Complete deconstruction? Or the 'unbearable lightness of being'? If you give the movie the time to unfold, it will reward you revealing an entertaining concept by the end.

In a world where, after each break-up, ex-partners must exchange a chosen body part, Wish You Were Ear explores the lasting impact of relationships. People not only lose a literal piece of themselves with each split, but also carry visible reminders of every past love.

A magician can never reveal the secret of his trick. The greatest Hungarian magician Rezső Gács, Rodolfó, we are trying to show the secret of the greatest magician'stricks and his life in an unusual way. It is as if life itself is the stage itself, and behindthe smile and lightness there is a lot of practice, suffering and difficulty that must beovercome and hidden. Colleagues, the family, we present Rodolfó's life as he explained his tricks with reconstructed and archival footage. I hope so.

A mouse receives thunderous applause at the end of his classical-music concert, but when he goes back to his dressing room, he is not as he seems.

A centaur family moves into an apartment in Budapest, where the residents, led by the house janitor, don't take kindly to the odd lifestyle of the new residents.

Ladányi, a landowner of 800 acres lives high in Ádámháza, while his bailiff, Pókai keeps on raiding him.

Nine-year-old Rózi is bored on the beach with her grandmother when she suddenly has a vision: she must help a pale man die.

An homage to Emile Reynaud, the first man to project animated films on a public screen.

Hamvas Béla út 11. is a meditative avant-garde exploration bridging two great Hungarian visionaries, released in honor of director Béla Tarr’s legacy and philosopher Béla Hamvas. Set within a socialist-era housing estate where a fifth of the population lives in uniform concrete panels, the film offers an intimate portrait of an unnamed protagonist maintaining human dignity amid isolation. His daily rituals carefully preparing instant soup, washing dishes, and reading in bed are performed with a poise that serves as a shield against spiritual decay. He navigates the building’s decline, from paper-thin walls to a rickety elevator, with stoic calm. From his balcony at sunset, he gazes past the concrete sprawl toward the Citadella. The final shot captures the night estate as a massive grid of glowing windows where residents return to individual concrete cages, creating a surreal image in its raw reality where image and silence converge to evoke the metaphysical depths of existence.

After a chance meeting, a boy and a girl travel through the wild Romanian landscape on a rickety motorbike.

In this comedy-filled drama, three underground Budapest taxi drivers, struggling to make ends meet, see their friendship tested by a sudden upheaval, forcing each to confront moral choices that could change their lives.

An investigation into the sighting of a blue horse with roller skates in an apartment building turns into a burlesque nightmare.

Animated look at an ever-changing portrait of a man and a woman

The dramatized documentary In the Footsteps of Bartók (Bartók Nyomában) follows Béla Bartók’s trip to Turkey in 1936, from Istanbul to Adana, during which it became clear that Turkish and Hungarian folk music have similarities that go back to our roots.

Csonka, Yvette, Eszter and Noemi are middle-aged women who transform themselves into a sculpted mass of muscle. Their physique is both a temple and a tool – outer and inner strength manifested as one. Unlike previous documentaries about individuals who pump iron, Nemes avoids a kitsch portrait of a subculture. Instead, she is fascinated by these women’s lives out of the spotlight and beyond the gym, exploring the reasons that made them choose this singular and often punishing lifestyle. What emerges is a determination to face down stereotyping and ridicule as each dedicates themselves to achieving their dream.

Murder is committed in the forest. A young man becomes caught up in the events, and this experience has an increasingly unsettling effect on him.

This pulsating collage animation interwoven with folk art elements is a warning of the dangers of extinction, in which an organism is connected to each day of the week.

An actor shows up for the last audition of the day; the director's last chance to get the performance he wants.

Young man suffers from depression with the only partner in his life: addiction.

A photosensitive boy lives with his disabled father in a caravan at the edge of the forest. One day, life presents the boy with a choice: should he stay to care for his father or choose love and freedom?

Short, personal and poetic documentary etude

To get on with her life, Els, a mother in her forties, has to accept her adult daughter’s decision to request psychiatric euthanasia.

Elderly patients are lying in a Budapest hospital. Most have no hope of recovery, even their families have given up on them. All day long they observe as the world goes by, or they simply turn inwards. And yet hope still burns within them: from time to time they gather strength and clench their fists, or even stand up again. Instead of a simple report, director Pál Zolnay and cinematographer Elemér Ragályi recompose images of despair, illness and death, inner fortitude, playfulness and hope into lyrical film poetry.

A man's life is a constant rush.

Magda longs to move from respectable poverty to the carefree world of the rich. Against her mother's and uncle's admonition, she elopes with her lover, the frivolous Sándor Tomory, who promises her a life of luxury. Her happiness doesn't last long, the young man soon tires of her and leaves her. In despair, Magda flees to suicide. She is rescued and cared for in her uncle's house. Here she learns that Tomory has been arrested for forging bills of exchange. The uncle, "the watchmaker of the soul", tries to save this lost soul. He frees the boy, giving him a chance to start over. Tomory regrets his recklessness and vows to change. He asks Magda to marry him. Disappointed, she at first spurns the unfaithful young man, but when she is convinced that he has truly reformed, she forgives him and marries him.

A love story torn between two men. Tragedy is lurking under the surface of deliberately kitschy images: if I can’t hold someone, I must devour him.