Discoveries from Hungary World Cinema

“Baba” spent 30 years of his life working in Saudi Arabia while his daughters grew up in Cairo. Much of their relationship was created and preserved through videos exchanged over the years. When they are reunited, none of the family members completely manage to abandon this form of communication, as if trapped in the logic of exile.

Fitting in her new class is not easy for the daydreamer Kata. When she helps one of the cool kids, she gains a new friend - but her single mother is about to make things difficult again.

The elderly Isabel Cardoso works in the kitchen of a nursery school. Her hands are worn, her memory sharp and heavy with grief. In moments of stillness she reaches across the divide, communicating with her deceased mother through the stirring winds, the rippling surface of water, the cracked earth. A richly intimate documentary mosaic of the strength, struggle and transcendence of black womanhood.

Three decades after his second burial, Hungarian executed prime minister, Imre Nagy, is out of the grave again. In his wanderings through the streets of Budapest, Imre gets trapped. Hopelessly, he tries to find a way out; to die again. What is dead, will die again. Over and over. A city symphony with horses, pistols and a cowboy; a western film. A duel between "the image" and "the visual", inspired by Friedrich Schiller's "Das Lied von der Glocke".

A Nepali restaurant and its owner are melancholily waiting for customers to show up.

Animation film from Hungary

When a mysterious creature stalks the night, a group of rangers employ camera traps and radio frequencies to enter this animal’s secret world.

A pool in the middle of a desert landscape: a cloud passes by, an animator performs a ballet in front of a deserted pool - otherwise nothing happens here. In minimalist coloured and pencil drawings, Alexander Gratzer ponders the relationship between animation (film) and audience.

Our hero stumbles across the road looking for the other side. He walks into a smoky pub while wandering in the city at night.

A boy finally meets a girl he can fall in love with. But the girl is wrong to fall in love with. Especially if you're her next target.

Dongdong, Xixi and their little sister has a Chinese father and a Hungarian mother. The father, Zheng, has been living in Hungary since the year 1990, yet he still holds a critical attitude towards the ‘western way’ of educating children, so he fights a lot with his wife on this. His children are now learning piano, violin, singing, calligraphy, ping-pong, badminton, swimming, kung fu, Chinese, English and so on. They are busy attending different courses every day after school, even every weekend. He gets worried when he is not at home, since the mother doesn’t force the kids to stick to the training schedules.

Abandoned neighbourhoods, a ghostly voice on the intercom, an impending eclipse and, above all, the contrails of the passing planes in the sky. In the everyday, (all too) human panorama of everyday life in present day Portugal, the artfully arranged sequences are captured in the magical reduction, and minor disturbances are always included.

This short film is set in a brothel in a port town. The main character is Jenny, a young blonde dishwasher who suffers repeated humiliation and torture. She dreams of a pirate ship arriving in town, and with the help of the sailors, she can take bloody revenge on the townspeople for her grievances.

Science fiction horror flick featuring young couples of the 1930’s Budapest. The protagonists visit the ruins of Visegrád, only to be surprised by the old hosts of the castle emerging from the ruins… and that is just the start of it!

Orsi is a single mother, living with her 5-year-old daughter. She’s just found a man on a dating site who she is about to go on a date with. This short film is about a special night of a middle-aged mother.

This is a representation of bad relationships and destructive environments through the director's personal experiences.

In November 1988 an off-duty police officer was fatally wounded by a gunshot on the 47 tram line in Budapest. This documentary follows the courtroom proceedings of the murder case.

The voyage of an old Chinese professor, living in Budapest, to his and present-day China. Can he free himself from his anxieties after years of humiliation? Can one make up for things lost?

The story of three eighth-grade students about to graduate from high school. Pista falls in love with a 16-year-old girl, Sárika, Gyula with a mature woman, Erzsébet, and Laci with the local theatre prima donna, Ferike. Laci buys a valuable piece of jewellery for the artist and gets into trouble. His friends go to Ferika to ask her to return the gift, which upsets Laki so much that he wounds Pista in a duel. The class in the theatre boo the prima donna who is responsible for everything. The scandal causes the boys to be banned from their final exams, but their class teacher stands up for them.

1942 Hungarian comedy.

Different leading methods are tested on three groups of kindergarten children.