Hungary 2011

Based on the Hungarian novel "Our Street" by Sandor Tar, the films deals with a post-apocalyptic Hungarian-Ukranian village where everything is rotten, planes randomly crash, and only alcohol moves people around - no money, no electricity, only barter. In this wasteland, Ocsenas is the only hero, the one trying to survive amidst the savages and war, the one who helps everyone out, all while caught up in a love triangle that will define his future.

A short comedy by Hungarian director György Pálfi.

Documentary following a kindergarden group with four year olds.

Three generations of men, including a pervert that constantly seeks for new kinds of satisfaction, an obese speed eater and a passionate embalmer.

An old woman flies past six floors after jumping from the roof of her apartment block. Six stories on the poor state of humanity, told with humour and rare imagination to the accompaniment of a pulsating soundtrack from Amon Tobin. A woeful burlesque set in the present by one of Europe’s most original contemporary filmmakers.

Using almost no dialogue, the film follows a number of residents (both human and animal) of a small rural community in Hungary - an old man with hiccups, a shepherdess and her sheep, an old woman who may or may not be up to no good, some folk-singers at a wedding, etc. While most of the film is a series of vignettes, there is a sinister and often barely perceptible subplot involving murder.

Central cipher Ocsenás stands out as seemingly the one good man in this depraved reality, populated by a motley and crusty cast of misfits, before he tangles himself up in a suitably unhealthy love-triangle romance.

A day in the life of FIFA referee Attila Juhos, during which he presides over one of the most important Hungarian sporting events of the year: the match between BVSC and Ferencváros.

A Hungarian journalist who is about to start a family journeys to the United States in the hopes of finding his own father, a scientist who went missing in the 1970s while working on a top secret military research project that examined 'voices' from outer space.

An unsettling feeling overwhelms a small Hungarian town when two orthodox Jews arrive with a mysterious trunk. As residents begin to speculate on the purpose of the visit of these two strangers, order starts to crumble in town with some pursuing devious plans and others finding remorse in their hearts.

Hungarian tales around the end of the regime(s).

Housewife Katalin Munk (Johanna ter Steege) has her world torn apart when her lecturer husband János (Andor Lukáts) arrives home to tell her that he’s leaving her for a younger student of his. Katalin falls into a state of shock and wanders about the streets of Budapest in just her dressing gown carrying a pair of scissors. After a series of misadventures, Katalin eventually ends up in Turkey, where suddenly Katalin is awakened and decides to start a new life after meeting local man Hilal (Yavuz Bingol). Meanwhile her son Zoli (Norbert Varga) tries to hunt Katalin down.

Feature film

One day of a Hungarian stock trader.

1989 is an important year in the political history of Hungary. However, Petya and his friends couldn't care less. They are about to graduate high school. The only important things to them are the parties, girls, making some easy cash. And of course, passing the upcoming exam with the leaked questions.

The second film in Miklós Jancsó's documentary series Message of Stones.

The Third film in Miklós Jancsó's documentary series Message of Stones.

In the Kerepesi Street cemetery, three grave diggers contemplate the fate of the world, then they step out of this role and in a sequence of episodes they play the typical figures of contemporary Hungarian reality, the fat cat, the swashbuckler, the victim, underworld chieftains, and present little absurd dramas of love, marriage, friendship, public order and legal safety. The author and the film director walk among them all the time, contemplating, laughing at their plays. The stories starting from the graveyard and returning there warn of the inevitability of death. The author and the director (Gyula Hernádi and Miklós Jancsó) wisely make friends with death.

In the final days of World War II, a young Hungarian is making his way home, through countryside full of the debris of war, when he is captures and imprisoned by Russians. Left in the custody of a young Russian soldier, the two youths form a friendship in spite of not speaking each other's language.

Set in a detention camp in Hungary in 1869 at a time of guerilla campaigns against the ruling Austrians.

Two rabbis show the ruins of an abandoned synagogue to a group of primary school-age Jewish children, and stand by as the children dip bread in honey, drink wine, pray, and sing.

Zoltai is a Hungarian professor who returns home after a visit to the United States. Following a television interview, he commits suicide and leaves a note for his longtime friend Dr. Bardocz. The doctor and Zoltai's colleague Komindi join the police in investigating what drove the man to suicide.

A celebration of the culture and the ancient traditions in Badacsony.

This time, Kapa and Pepe are first of all prisoners of war – and convicts taken to forced labor service, Jews, Hungarian soldiers, German soldiers. Once they are to be executed, then again they are to perform executions. The film tells in spectacular episodes about the fact that in the past more than one century and a half we kept marching from war to war; occupation and liberation turned out to be indifferent, and why couldn’t the Jews execute the SS-guys? Our heroes hover about dilapidated barracks, then again on the bridges of the capital they guess whose satellites or eternal friends for all times we might be just now. In the cupboard, among the preserved fruit bottles, Stalin is still hiding. The authors of the film are cited before court, then in a showcase hospital they are waiting for the end to come. A Soviet soldier-maid closes the film with a Péter Nádas-quote.

What happens to children whose parents forget to pick them up from school?

Every day life for young men and women in Budapest is on display. All "teenage savages" at the time when communism disappeared in Eastern Europe, they now view the world in a sinister way. Examples: A woman becomes irritated with a man who has left his dog. A father has an argument with his wife about an alarming (to the parents) arousal of sexuality in their 10 y.o. daughter. A young girl is distressed by her growing realization that she is more and more like her sadistic grandmother. A conversation between two guys, apparently about an old car, takes an unexpected turn. - Written by Gonz30

After a session of hypnosis reveals suppressed trauma, a young woman confronts memories of her past.

A mother and son as grapple with the questions of life and death on an inner journey filled with strange stories.

Drawing inspiration from the death-squad murders of several Gypsy families in Hungary in 2008, director Bence Fliegauf's chilling and unforgettable real-life horror story follows a family whose dreams of emigration and escape are suddenly, horribly destroyed.

An avant-garde, psychedelic, poetic minimalism, meditative, cartoon-esque sketch of the modern world.

A woman's consuming love forces her to bear the clone of her dead beloved. From his infancy to manhood, she faces the unavoidable complexities of her controversial decision.

We all live in continuous hypnosis, and those people who awake from the dream and start to live their own lives frighten the rest of us. This film documents András Feldmár's thoughts, thoughts that make listeners very uneasy, thoughts that prompt us to search our souls. Through his thoughts we become acquainted with a man who continually searches his own soul and has a way of thinking that makes us very uneasy.

A young woman leaves a state orphanage to find her mother in this interesting examination of how the overt repression of women in the older pattern of village life has been replaced by the more subtle exploitation inherent in the apparently freer existence of young girls in the contemporary city.

An expressionist biography of Edith Stein, who converted from the Jewish faith to the Catholic one and became a Carmelite sister. She would die in a German concentration camp.

This drama follows the dilemma of a young, unwillingly pregnant wife who gives her child up for adoption by a businesswoman. Anna doesn't need another mouth to feed. She can barely afford to care for the two she already has so when she discovers that she is six weeks pregnant she readily accepts the cash offer from Terez, her tough boss at the store where she works. If she will isolate herself throughout the pregnancy, secretly bear the child and immediately allow Terez to sign for it, Anna will receive $50,000. Most of the story then focuses upon Anna's emotional processes as she evaluates her choice. Included are dream segments and shots an unborn baby in the womb.

The Aurora Borealis is a story of family that is rich in twists and turns. It breaks the depths of the relationship between mother and daughter. A successful lawyer in Vienna, Olga (Ildikó Tóth) is called back to Hungary when her old mother, Mary (Mari Törőcsik) suddenly falls into a coma. While Mary is floating between life and death, Olga finds a deeply silent secret. The increasingly passionate research leads back to the post-war Europe of the '50s.

The movie tells a fictional story about hungarian politician Anna Kéthly, who was one of the first woman in the hungarian parlament. Decades after her immigration to Brussels, her former lover's relative comes after her - sent by the hugarian government (the Kádár regime) to pursuade her to come home - and therefore legitimate the politicial system.

Jutka, a young woman who works in a factory, falls in love with Andras, a university student. She pretends to be a student, to him and to his parents, and begins to live a lie. Finally she rebels against Andras and his demands and the social conventions that forced her to live a lie.

A man and a kid are discovering beauty in life.

This story follows a young student, who is orphaned as she grows to adulthood in the shadow of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Coming from the Communist intelligentsia, she sees her friends and family react differently. Her lover, a married factory manager, supports the patriots and later assists fellow workers in staging a strike. Meanwhile her sister and others express anger at being forced from their homes during the revolution and continue to express a hatred for the rebels afterwards. But in the end they realize that for all people, real life is not possible after the revolt and its brutal suppression by the Soviets and their collaborators.

Young Petőfi Zoltán the son of the great Hungarian poet, Petőfi Sándor, feels as though he were a stranger in the house of his mother and stepfather. Off he goes, finding work in Debrecen, where his theatrical and literary career and love all seem to be on their way.

Márta Mészáros' father, the sculptor László Mészáros, was executed during the Stalinist purges of the Soviet Union. The director addressed her father's fate in many of her earlier films, but this time, she focuses on her mother, Vilma Kovács.

The Annunciation (in Hungarian: Angyali üdvözlet) is a Hungarian film directed by András Jeles in 1984, based on The Tragedy of Man (1861) by Imre Madách. When Adam (Péter Bocsor) and Eve (Júlia Mérő), having succumbed to Lucifer's temptation, are cast out of the Garden of Eden, Adam holds Lucifer (Eszter Gyalog) to his promise, reminding him that "You said I would know everything!". So Lucifer grants Adam a dream of the world to come. And what a bizarre dream: Adam becomes Miltiades in Athens; a knight called Tancred in Byzantium; Kepler in Prague; Danton in revolutionary Paris; and a nameless suitor in Victorian London. Guided by a deceptively sweet but ultimately contemptuous Lucifer, Adam confronts an endless procession of the horror of the human story ... rapists and concubines, betrayal and savagery, mindless cruelty and fanaticism.

The twenty-year-old young man Sz. László is a lorry guard employed by an agricultural co-operative located in the vicinity of the capital. One day he neither posts the money officially entrusted to him nor goes to work, spending time and money as he likes on things he otherwise cannot afford, such as hanging around, sweets, driving in taxis, restaurants, Lake Balaton, girls, etc.

Our story unfolds parallel to the uncovering of hidden messages in a mysterious painting. The painting in question is The Ambassadors, the well known work of Hans Holbein which at several points inflicts a wound upon a reality depicted as harmonious and complete. One such wound is the anamorphic skull which drifts in the foreground of the painting conveying a paradox impression that makes the viewer question what he/she sees and does not see. This visual sensation arouses the suspicion that here, within the universe of Holbein's painting rhizomatic meanings run along behind and beyond the simple representation as the story of the characters in the film is also mysteriously connected to events of this 500 year old time segment.

A regular Sunday in 1970s Budapest.

Miklós Szentkuthy reports on his life, his works, the Holy Trinity, Karl Marx, and the time he became a cardinal.

Interesting crime story about woman-prisoner, incest and murder..

In the life of a young virologist appears a different kind of virus. The kind he wasn't expecting...

Eva lives cut off from the outside world in het sterile blue apartment. She's allergic to just about everything. Are her allergies caused by a polluting multinational corporation, or is she so sensitive and vulnerable she's making herself ill?

A mother with an affection to air-refreshers, a daughter looking down on her mothers job.

Piroska is an overweight, alienated nurse who can’t resist cream-filled pastries. She works in the terminal ward of a hospital; her life is surrounded by death. One day she sets off to find her long-lost childhood friend. While tracing her recollections, she embarks on a paradox-filled voyage within her own memory and the memory of those she encounters.

Krisztina Szabó. 27 years old. A conserve factory girl. She desires a different kind of life. Something really big needs to happen. The only chance of making it come true is to play the lottery, or collect points in any kind of consumer competition. She often sings her favourite song.

A little girl manages to escape the horrors of the Holocaust. Decades later she is confronted by a group of Neo Nazis, and history repeats itself. Based on a true story.

The story of a love-triangle is recounted through Anitas memories and jagged monologue. Anita is tremendously naive and in love, Laci is a petty small-town gangster with great powers of persuasion and the secret lover of Szilvi. The three of them leave for Vienna, where Laci sells off the two girls to a peep-show for some small money.

A love story between a young, policeman and a Chinese immigrant girl, who speak no common language.

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.

The internationally acclaimed director and recipient of the Erasmus Award in 2007, Péter Forgács created a documentary exploring the fate of hundred thousands of Hungarian men and women who arrived to the United States between 1890 and 1921. To tell their sagas Forgács weaved this grand epic from the early American cinema, found footage, photographs and interviews. The film reveals the difficult moments of arrival, integration and assimilation, which eventually fed the happiness of the later generations and their fulfillment of the American dream.

Free fall reflects to the times before the Shoah, the darkest chapter of the 20th century Hungary, based on the home movies of the talented musician, photographer and businessman, György Pető who made 8mm films from 1938.

Peter Forgacs' Bibo Breviarium (Istvan Bibo's Fragments) is a look at Istvan Bibo, one of the most revered Hungarian philosophers and politicians of the 20th century. The images in the film consist of found footage from the man's life, while the audio consists of an ongoing monologue that alternates between biographical information on the man and quotes from his writings. Paul Merrick performs the narration on the English translation of the film.

Main character of AZ ÖRVÉNY is cameraman György Petö. His private films shot before and during World War II document his family, and particularly his girlfriend and later wife Eva Lengyel. With hindsight, these films, mainly recorded in the southern Hungarian city of Szeged, make up an extremely wry historical document. Petö was a Jew. Slowly but gradually we notice how the anti-Jewish laws and political revolutions in Hungary take the family in a stranglehold. AZ ÖRVÉNY is a rhapsody of found footage. Skillfully edited and complemented with additional footage, it produces an account of an atrocious era and a plea for human dignity.

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.

A trip nearest to the boundaries of life and death: back and forth.

Filmmaker Péter Forgács compiles home movies by a family of Catalan industrialists who have documented their lives as their homeland is besieged by labor unrest, the collapse of the monarchy, the rise of anarchism, and ultimately the Spanish Civil War.

This film is constructed from the diary films of Zoltan Bartos, amateur filmmaker and composer of popular dance music. Shot from the 1920s through the middle of the 1950s, the film reflects both private and official history.

Angelos Papanastassiou, the man behind the camera, a story of a Greek patrician of WW2 times Athens. In the very first days of the Nazi occupation Angelos decided to record and document the Greece motherland's sufferings. Using a clandestine 16-mm film camera risking daily his own, and his families life, filmed, documented the Nazi atrocities in Athens all through the German-Italian occupation. Meanwhile his daughter, Loukia was born and we follow her first steps as the family life images juxtaposed over the tragic chapter of modern Greek history. Angelos Papanastassiou secretly developed, edited and saved the films, which later become one of the principal evidence of the Nazi atrocities at the Nuremberg Trials 1947. The Angelos’ Film composed from a unique film journal of wartime Athens and offers a new insight to Greece’s past, with the music of Tibor Szemzõ.

Laci is a 16-year old gypsy boy, who lives off casual jobs. One day, he gets picked up from the streets along with a small group of workers for a construction job. He has to participate in the completion of a wall, that surrounds a series of tenement buildings. The film follows the various stages of the construction as Laci helps out the other workers. In the end, Laci is asked to complete the work. He now takes his first look beyond the wall, which holds an unusual revelation for him.

A family is getting ready for lunch in 1944...