Discoveries from Hungary World Cinema

Augusta has some visitors from outer space.

Officer Karikas from Petersburg should be in Saratov with her servant,in the way he played cards and losing much,even to stuck in the hotel.Local officials took him for anticipated auditor.With this error starting a chain of events.

A seemingly regular day of the drifter 'Moonshine', wanted by the police, who's trying to to get along by working as a hired hand. Little does he know how this day will differ from the others, thanks to two unexpected encounters.

A documentary about the life and work of the Hungarian composer and conductor, Peter Eotvos.

Lajos Kassák, poet and painter, lived through right-wing and left-wing dictatorships, revolutionary and wartime periods, but also democracy. Director Dér Asia's documentary, Screaming in Our Own Way, follows the fate of contemporary Central European artists who, like Kassák, have a similar attitude towards power, through the story of Kassák's life.

At the end of the summer, while preparations for an air show are taking place in the sky, a man and a woman go to the water. But the arrival of a legendary aerobatic pilot will not be the event of the day for them.

Peti Janklovics comes in, tells stories, stands up. In the 4th minute he mentions, weaving into the story, how much he loved Smooth Criminals by Michael Jackson, whereupon Edu suddenly bursts in, the song plays, bone pro, choreographed dance, music, lights. It's mostly about the pulse, the mood, the moves, but more about having a laugh, then Peti goes out, Edu continues, and the audience already suspects that at any moment Peti or Edu again could burst back on stage, be it Lambada clip analysis, glassing, wardrobe riots, lemon Calippo, gel hair, sunglasses, plaid flanneling tied around the waist (nirvana era), Hally-Gally, bumper cars, bike shorts (women's), glassing underneath Route 67, New Kids And The Block fan club on the cherry tree, denim jacket, three-second phone calls, Hyper-Hyper, or, for example, a feature on professional slowpokes, and a detailed recounting of the first school disco kisses with audience participation, but not like that.

Melissa is abducted at night. Her relatives do everything they can to find the girl, and their investigation leads to the 11th District crime organization. The truth slowly comes to light, which changes everything.

In peaceful swampland, a solitary man wades through long grass, crawling carefully through the water. Unable to fit in with the world of humans, Misu prefers to spend his time with cold-blooded reptiles, caring for them with extraordinary empathy. Solitude is his way of survival but also his biggest enemy.

A young girl with a dark secret tries to relieve her heavy heart by taking a walk in the city. She visits places and meets people she doesn’t want to to find her redemption.

The protagonist of "Picturesque Epochs" is Mária Gánóczy (1927-), a painter and a film aficionado who comes from a family of female artists as far back as her great-grandparents. She brought up nine children with her husband József Breznay (1916-2012), a fellow painter. Gánóczy's films and paintings immortalised the checkered history of Central Europe.

An introverted man creates a pillow friend in his hotel room to ease his loneliness but this new friendship is short-lived when the maid makes the bedding again and again.

Two Hookers and a Bitch is an experimental comedy following the three prostitutes Fanny, Lea and Henry over the course of three nights on their street as we watch them discuss love, marriage, sex, men and women and the prospects of a stable prosperous future.

SELECTION documents a KISZ (Hungarian Young Communist League) chapter at an oil refinery that is interested in hiring a musical act as entertainment for young workers. The documentary shows the group discussing their criteria for the band, as well as their interviews with the individual bands. It is quickly apparent that the group isn’t interested in any sort of musical talent or the potential audiences’ interest. Rather, they are focused on ideological or moral issues that may be perceived as negative, such as groupies or outfits that are seen as too trendy. They settle on the musical group that is potentially the easiest to control, the youngest band. SELECTION works as a larger metaphor for what censorship was like in Socialist Hungary and was banned from being publicly screened until 1982.

A coming-of-age story about three youngsters who find an escape from life's ordeals by working on the Budapest Children's Railway. While they enjoy playing at being responsible adults on the train, at home they are forced to mature abruptly.

The moving story of a man awaiting a heart transplant.

This short experimental documentary, shot on super 8, contains a soundtrack that was recorded by the film’s authors during a primary school class trip 24 years earlier.

A feature length, lively - montage style - documentary, capturing the essence of what life was like in socialist Hungary - dubbed the "The most cheerful barrack" back then - using contemporary music, interviews, adverts and news footages.

Szirtes's masterful experimental work is a dazzling composition of several years of filming within an industrial macro/microcosm, an abstract model of revolution and the beauty of daybreak.

The complete material of the jubilee, exclusive song evenings on video - from September 2008, Ákos and his band toured the country for a year with jubilee, acoustic performances. During this time they played 29 concerts, played to 65,000 people and travelled a total of 8,898 kilometres. The performance was a resounding success everywhere, with cathartic silence and standing ovations at every concert. A double concert was given at several venues to great acclaim.

Collage animation by Sándor Reisenbüchler, with references to the director’s personal life.

In 1911, natural gas is discovered in Transylvania, and György Bernády, the ambitious mayor of Marosvásárhely, dreams big: a domestic innovation modeled on the Western model. His enthusiasm takes him all the way to America. But is the Hungarian terrain ready for any kind of innovation?

Augusta's friend and her havoc-causing child visit.

A young man takes the bus and his surreal journey begins. During the voyage he is digging deeper and deeper into his suppressed, untold frustrations.

A short film by Jacqueline Molnár.

In March 2022, an unprecedented series of events began in Hungary. Just a few weeks before the parliamentary elections, a group of students from Budapest organized a protest with thousands of participants at the Parliament to draw public attention to the fact that teachers' unions had been making numerous demands to the government for years, in vain.

Ernő, under a pseudonym, takes up a position as a music teacher at a girls' school under the patronage of his grandmother, Countess Szerémy, to meet one of the pretty students, Martha, who later turns out to be the child of her grandmother's disowned son. The Countess agrees to the young couple's marriage, but Márta falls in love with Colonel Örkényi's nephew Kálmán. In the meantime, Ernő's feelings change, and he meets Kálmán's sister Piroska, whom he would prefer to marry. The Colonel, whose planned marriage to Countess Serémy was prevented by her mother when he was young, refuses to hear of it.

Siblings Peti and Kati accompanied by Félix, their small dachshund, visit their great-uncle, Professor Leonardo, who is just then working on his latest invention, the automaton. The mechanical ‘employee’ is ready to do all the jobs around the home: cooking, vacuuming, cutting the grass, darning socks, sewing on buttons, shining shoes. But when uncle Leo leaves home, the kids sneak back into the house and set the automaton going. The playful prank ends up in a dizzying muddle.

Who and how smoking was discovered?

For more than ten years, Berry and Baby Boy has been one of the most popular cartoon series among nursery and kindergarten children. In Berry and Baby 5 - Tales of the Months, the animated film follows the changing seasons in twelve short stories, as nature invites the characters to play together each month. Their adventures include celebrating together at a special carnival ball in February, jumping rope together in April, making fruit ice cream together in July and surprising each other with exciting gifts in December. And in the thirteenth, encore story, they take part in a cake competition which reveals that anyone, even the ever-conscientious Owl Doctor, can make a mistake.

The sky has shut its eyes of blue, the house has shut its many eyes, the meadow sleeps with quilt up too – sleep nice now, sleep, little Balázs. An animated adaptation of the poem “Lullaby,” writtenby the poet Attila József.

The main character got a strange call, from a broken vintage phone. The caller invited her for a date. She didn’t know who the caller was but she accepted the invitation and she is going on an adventure which she didn’t expect at all.

Documentary about the life of late hungarian jazz/pop singer Juli Fábián.

The story spanning the ages from prehistory to the conquest of space depicts the coexistence and battles between the weakling ‘little man’ of the title (a symbolic figure of the working class) and the exploitative elite.

The setting is Croatia and the time is the first third of the 20th century. The characters in this carnival "comedy" are drawn from the upper echelons of Croatian society. Krleza's characters talk of love, morality and art, but their appreciation of each other, their sense of true love, is as alien to them as true art: their approach to life and art are both false.

On a magical volcanic island that’s about to erupt, a tigress is relentlessly pursued by a lustful white tiger. Director Anna Katalin Lovrity’s bold shapes and vivid use of colour recall the cut-out artworks of Henri Matisse, that are a joy to watch on the big screen, whilst also cleverly presenting an uncomfortable subtext in a drama about natural forces.

Forgacs's Tractatus is composed of seven short video essays that refer to one of Wittgenstein's most influential works, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, first published in 1921.

János Kitka Jr, first seen in Schiffer's documentary 'Black Train' a decade earlier, is now 17 and is just released from a youth detention centre. He returns to his village and is put in the care of a probation officer. However, his family doesn't seem to help his situation, but rather makes him run away from home.

Short film about the creation of one single life.

Via the New York Times: "...the film has the free form of the agitprop movies made by Jean-Luc Godard in the late 1960's and early 1970's. At the center of it is the small fictional tale of Raffael, who stands for everything rotten in the newly liberalized Hungarian society. He is the owner of an amazingly profitable video shop in Budapast and, it seems, a speculator in currencies."