György Cserhalmi

The Real Santa

Two old women who happen to be pickpockets stole money from Simon, the taxi driver. The police are unable to find the thieves, so Simon decides to find them himself.

In this powerful film, the renowned William Shakespeare play is stripped down to the bare essentials, consisting of two lengthy shots.

1958. In the cell of the condemned, seven men await the signs of an approaching execution. All of them recall their pasts and envision their wish-dreams.

Vera is an engineer and a young divorcée. She is pretty, lonely, and has a boyfriend, Tamás, whom she is dating secretly on a certain day of the week at the week-end house of one of their friends, as Tamás has a family and does not intend to divorce his wife. Vera would like their relationship to be publicly acknowledged.

Zsadányi flees from the authorities with his goddaughter, Bankós Mari, and they escape into the forest. The film then skips ahead thirty-fold years: Zsadány and Mari are now lovers, with the sound of war in the background halting their romance. The old friends of Zsadányi have joined with the Nazis, and the landowner living with his peasants in a socialist community grows distant from them. Zsadányi is held responsible for political problems in the country, and will pay with his life.

A horse goddess gives birth to three powerful brothers who set out into the Underworld to save three princesses from three evil dragons and reclaim their ancestors' lost kingdom.

A traditional Hungarian poetic fairytale that describes the epic adventures of a young shepherd through love, war, magic and death.

1956. Bébé is a painter, but he has not worked for years. The news arriving form Paris about the death of his childhood friend, Halász Petár affects him deeply, but his reflections are continually disturbed by telephone calls: the Alliance for Fine Arts wants to purchase one of the popular self-portraits of Halász.

The sixteen year old Bea is on her way home from her sports class when a foreign long- vehicle stops by her and she is asked the way. A shove, the banging of the door, and the long-vehicle pulls away with its victim towards the South. Beas abductors rape her and sell her as a prostitute. She tries to escape, keeps leaving marks behind, hoping that her beloved father, Sándor, will find her.

From the intrigues and slander of the branch the painter Hódosi moves out to a hamlet at Hortobágy. He gets into conflict situation as well as he cannot endure that the political and economic elite of the neigbourhood would devastate the nature conservation area with hunting and (tax evading) goose husbandry.

Imre Horváth and his friends gather to celebrate his wife's birthday. They are confused because of the changes in the country's politics and want Horváth to be much more active politically, but he is more concerned about his affair with his best friend's daughter.

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.

Réb went to the United States about 20 years ago and in the eighties he returns to Budapest with his teenager daughter...

A ghost is haunting Lubló: Kaszparek Mihály, trader of wines, does not refrain from haunting his native town even in broad daylight. He rides his horse sitting backwards, pays with false gold and pays frequent visits to his widowed wife, who is far from being appalled by the caresses of her dead husband.

While awaiting his release from the Soviet detention camp he is being held in, a half-starved refugee (Andras Ambrus) finds that an error has been made and his name is not on the to-be-released list. It is then that he is forced to assume the identity of a dead man whose name is on the list. Ambrus at first refuses, but because he was an orphan and cannot produce evidence of his true identity, he has no other choice. However, when he returns to the outer world and the community he was raised in, he is greeted with suspicion. When he tries to claim his part-ownership of a farm from his adopted uncle, he is refused and beaten by farmhands the uncle sets on him.

K.O.

The movie portrays a peasant revolt in Hungary in the early twentieth century.

Ambrus, the canon pretender and Gerzson, the stinking rich lawyer, taking advantage of a sect and a fake hospice, are engaged in doing unsuspecting old people out of their money.

The seeming hopelessness of combatting an all-powerful government that will not tolerate political dissension is the focus of this excellent historical drama set in the mid-19th century in Hungary. In the opening scenes, Hungary has just lost its bid for independence from Austria and a Magyar officer, unable to bear the tragedy of defeat and what it means, says an affectionate good-bye to his beloved horse and then shoots the animal and himself. Two years later, Ferenc (Gyorgy Cserhalmi) is trying to eke out a living for his wife and her family -- and at the same time avoid any hint of sympathy for Hungarian independence because the Secret Police are everywhere. Just as life seems to be going well, Ferenc's former commanding officer (Lajos Oze) arrives and begins discussing revolution again -- a futile pursuit at this point in time. The next day, Ferenc is thrown into an insane asylum and everyone else is arrested as well.

The film takes place at the end of 1946. Rumours are spread that the food supply will not arrive for it has been robbed. Workers of the metal factory go on strike.

Small-town politics (corruption etc.) in Hungary.

Félálom

Detective Sebők is shot at by a fleeing criminal and then pushed off the road. Sebők breaks his leg. Left by his wife, pensioned by his boss on the basis of false reports, he has a clash with banker Gömöri at the colonel’s party.

Rododendron

Anyegin

Végtelenben kettő

Hungarian Drama Film

Karrer plods his way through life in quiet desperation. His environment is drab and rainy and muddy. Eaten up with solitude, his hopelessness would be incurable but for the existence of the Titanik Bar and its beautiful, haunting singer. But the lady is married and Karrer is determined to keep her husband away...

The Witness (Hungarian: A tanú, also known as Without A Trace), is a 1969 Hungarian satire film, directed by Péter Bacsó. The film was created in a tense political climate at a time when talking about the 1950s and the 1956 Revolution was still taboo. Although it was financed and allowed to be made by the communist authorities, it was subsequently banned from release. As a result of its screening in foreign countries, the communist authorities eventually relented and allowed it to be released in Hungary. It was screened at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section.[1] A sequel was made in 1994 named "Megint tanú" (English: Witness Again).

It has been fifteen years since the death of her father, Agamemnon, and Elektra still burns with hatred for Aegisztosz, who conspired with Elektra's mother to kill him.

The film tells the story of a regiment of Hungarian hussars stationed in Poland. The hussars, mostly ordinary men, have heard news of the uprising and wish to return to the homeland to defend the newly independent country. The Empire, on the other hand, is firmly resolved that all Hungarian troops in the imperial army should be kept as far away from the trouble spot as possible, knowing that most soldiers would be loyal to Budapest rather than Vienna.

Two stories running in parallel: In one, a model is surrounded by men wanting to use and abuse her though, without realizing it, she is protected by a strange tramp guardian angel. In the other, a blind goldsmith struggles to produce his latest commission in the midst of his alcoholism and depression. Both then descend further and further into their own personal hells until they finally re-find peace with themselves and then their stories briefly merge.

The film depicts the lives of veterans of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution in the American Civil War, based in part on an Ambrose Bierce story. The whole film was re-edited using his own method called "light editing" in order to make it resemble a damaged silent film from the late 1800s.

One of the doyennes of Hungarian film deals with a dark period of national history: the Soviet regime in Hungary. She portrays it through the fate of the former prime minister and national hero, Imre Nagy. The script is based on the diary written by Imre Nagy, and the memories of his daughter, Erzsébet Nagy, as well as authentic documents and records.

A focus on the tormented lives of intellectuals who failed to protest recent troubles in their homeland. Jancsó emphasizes highly evocative and ambiguous imagery over dialog or exposition as he – through visually fascinating imagery – depicts the painful, stunted lives of Hungary's intellectuals who have remained silent and ineffectual during various political crises.

The aging Eszter clarify outstanding relationship.

At a dusty crossroads in the Soviet Union villagers surrender their possessions - a horse, a samovar, a goat - to the state. The train which takes them away brings to the village a physically and mentally handicapped woman, barely able to speak. She makes herself bracelets of burrs and studies herself in a cracked and cloudy mirror. Befriended by very few, teased and tormented by many she seeks protection at a huge portrait of Stalin.

A nurse and her surgeon-lover are part of a resistance movement in 1940s Czechoslovakia. When they are discovered, her lover flees and she must find a place to hide. A patient whose life she saved, a man from a remote mountain village where time stopped 150 years ago, agrees to hide her as his wife.

1852. Gáspár Noszlopy escapes from prison in order to capture the emperor, who is to visit Hungary, with his companions and force him to sign the Declaration of Independence. He is only able to find four fanatic men, as his one-time soldiers have already accepted the established order as unalterable, each of them having found a satisfactory way of life and unwilling to undertake a suicidal experiment.

1839. The discontented noblemen assemble at the country estate of count Gábor Falussy, on the pretext of a boar hunt. Also an English engineer arrives for the sake of constructing the railway line leading up to the count’s quarry.

A story of a young student of medicine, who arrives in a small mountain village after being accused for carrying out illegal abortion. The film reflects the moral decline of the society, where stealing in secret and making compromises against one's beliefs make up mundane reality. The filmmakers went to perhaps the furthest possible limits in terms of allowed social criticism in the 1980s. The negative picture is enhanced by its rural setting, since the Slovak village had been traditionally associated with strict morals and conservative values.

A young refugee, Aryan, is shot while illegally trying to cross the Hungarian border. While tending him back to health, a doctor at a refugee camp discovers that Aryan has gained an extraordinary talent—he can levitate. Aryan is smuggled out by the doctor, who is intent on exploiting his secret.

Anna filmje

The film take place in Budapest, in the end of The World War II, telling the story of a young Communist who escaped from prison. The boy tries to revitalise his contact with the movement, but he is told to be quiet and wait.

Andor Czettl, in his early sixties, visits the secret service archives one day to read into the reports about himself and discovers a shocking fact. His very best friend János Pásztor was an informer, spying on him and writing reports about him for decades. Sára Cserhalmi's first feature focuses not so much on the actual problem of informing and betrayal as on the contradictory relationship of the two protagonists. It avoids any final judgments. First and foremost, it seeks answers to questions like how an informer can live in our present times and how the one being reported on can cope with this state. Can a close friendship that began decades ago last if such betrayal comes to light? How can someone live and cope with this fact?

When Hungary's newest prime minister is shot and killed at a reception, the resulting investigation is necessarily swift and comprehensive. This compelling political thriller uncovers two prime suspects: the woman who guns the leader down, and a man who was friends with both the prime minister and his murderer. Using video surveillance footage, as well as other more artful and symbolic imagery, the noted "visualist" director Miklos Jancso, who is known for his craft in getting his points across non-verbally, combines fantasy and reality in a highly ironic manner.

A wonderful dark tale of coming of age in a country in transformation - then Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) in 1990s. Against the backdrop of a regime change and general crisis of basic values, a young man is finding his way into adult life. Playing a part in a love (hate?) triangle he does not fully understand until the conclusion, he desperately tries to make sense of the unpredictable behavior of the other two main characters which is linked to the secrets lurking in their past. All this while he is not sure about his own role in a world where yesterday's truths mean nothing today. Brilliant actors in a brilliant film that even gives you a glimpse of hope at the end.

A story about a boy and a girl in a mental hospital.

Set in the 1890s on the Hungarian plains, a group of farm workers go on strike in which they face harsh reprisals and the reality of revolt, oppression, morality and violence.

After the World War I, enthusiastic young people found the intellectual group of Hungarian Communist Party. Their aim is to propagate the communist ideology to the people and get the workers on their side. They have fierce discussions on the new ideas, though their movement is not very successful. They clash with their opposition, attempt to lead people to the Red Army, but without success.

Dés-Bereményi: Férfi és Nő

Narcisus and Psyche is based on a novel by Sandor Weores which was adapted by Vilmos Csaplar and director Gabor Body for a feature-length film. Borrowing the character of Psyche from mythology and placing her in Europe in the 19th century, the authors give her a "modern" life. She is an attractive young woman - and remains so throughout the film, in spite of one hardship after another. Psyche is libidinous, and her prurient interests shock her staid contemporaries.

1942. Owing to a stolen mink coat, Süti, the young poet and journalist, gets acquainted with Katalin, the idolated singer. Before being drafted to labour service, he shows the actress the song he composed for her, entitled Smouldering Cigarette.

Rózsa Sándor

In the second half of the 1800s, the daughter of a Debrecen family marries a landowner, Kálmán Jablonczay. The couple move to the husband's castle. The marriage starts off happily but the new wife, Mária Rickl, soon finds herself at odds with the gentry lifestyle, her husband and her father-in-law...

A pokol élővilága

György Szomjas’s first feature—made after a decade of short documentaries—is a bold attempt at a goulash western, set on the puszta, or Great Hungarian Plain, in 1837. Mixing Miklós Jancsó imagery and a Sergio Leone narrative, this ballad-like saga opens with image of a lone horseman on the empty plain, riding past a rude gallows. The film concerns the vengeful return of a legendary betyár (outlaw), briefly a hero to the local herdsmen who oppose the state building a canal across their grazing land. Although Szomjas works from ethnographic records and archival material, it is hardly surprising that this violent, primitivist film would be more popular with Hungarian audiences than critics. Replete with young guns, crooked sheriffs, tavern brawlers and hardbitten plug-uglies, this widescreen film is strikingly shot by Elémer Ragályi (cinematographer for most of Gyula Gazdag’s films)—a feast of loamy, autumnal colors.

This epic story takes place between 1820 and 1860 during the Habsburg Monarchy, and portrays the life one of the greatest Hungarian aristocrats - Count Széchenyi - who was born with extra-ordinary mental and spiritual talents. In the years following the fall of Napoleon the young count Széchenyi irresponsibly seduces his brother's wife, and the consequent scandal ruins his career as an army officer. After the sudden death of his humiliated lover Count Széchenyi drastically changes his character from that of a shallow young man into a responsible nobleman seeking to conquer his fate by creating great achievements in his remaining life.

Concerning the Mátyás era in Hungarian history, during the reign of Matthias Corvinus (1443–1490), the film focuses on three eras of the king's life: the young Mátyás fights for the throne, the older Mátyás as king, and the fate of the royal crown and the royal heir after his death.

Marhuľový ostrov

The heroes of this story, based on real events at the end of the 1930s and during World War II, face and dismiss the illusions of intellectuals about their ability to transform society. Professor Magyary and his disciples hoped to promote the modernisation of Hungarian society through a radical reform of public administration.

Dés László: Nagy utazás - Aréna koncert

Enikős and Dorkas marriage is unbearable. Hysterical, cruel and humiliating scenes are enacted in front of the childrens eyes, while the childless Barbara is held by her husband, the painter, to be a toy and sometimes a painting screen.

Péter, a literary critic, is tasked by the secret police to persuade Social Democratic politician, Anna Kéthly, who has been living in exile for decades, to return home.

The film depicts the incredible metamorphosis of a clerk whose sense of identity and pride are reawakened by an unexpected development.

A brothel in a small Hungarian town becomes the home of a medical student after his favorite working girls find out he's out of rent money. Trouble brews as they learn his mother is coming for a visit and they must transform the house.

When hunting, Zrínyi Miklós finds an Angel with a broken wing. He takes him for a heavenly message and carries him to his castle for cure. Lords and priests come to Zrínyi's court, one after the other, to see Angel. The occasion is appropriate for the ban to win them over to his plan: they should unite their forces to fight for the country's independence.

1894. The mortal remains of Lajos Kossuth are brought home from abroad, the railways are lined with people with their hats in hand, and among them stands the teenager Imre Tányér. 1910. The grown-up Imre undertakes the task to solve the question unsolved since 1848-49, i.e. the transformation of peasant life. He fights for the rights of his class, for justice, for human dignity in a society distorted, backward and built on inequality.

Házasságtörés

Frigyes, shortly after immigrating to New York City from Hungary, leaves his family for the pleasures and gratifications of being a street bum. But as time goes by, the appeal of this lifestyle wanes. A series of adventures with other drifters reaches a dramatic conclusion when some thugs murder one of them. This startling event forces Frigyes to come to terms with his current situation and decide whether to return to the family he abandoned.

A German stage actor finds unexpected success and mixed blessings in the popularity of his performance in a Faustian play as the Nazis take power in pre-WWII Germany. As his associates and friends flee or are ground under by the Nazi terror, the popularity of his character supercedes his own existence until he finds that his best performance is keeping up appearances for his Nazi patrons.

A historical drama set in the 1400s, a young man sent to Italy but is forced back after his father's mysterious death.

Drop dead please! Following the sudden death of a mysterious engine driver in his sixties, the Wife, the Lover, her illegitimate Daughter and an increasing number of shady characters from his spurious past want to know the true identity of the man they loved. They are dying to know which of them was really loved by him, and where he has hidden the fantastic fruit of his double life. In their deadly struggle, our heroes find themselves in the center of a satirical crime comedy, the sinful roots of which stretch back to the eighties, the closing decade of the socialist era.

1629, Transylvania: Reigning prince Bethlen Gábor has Don Diego, the Spanish chronicle knight be brought to his court in order to make him record his life and deeds for posterity.

Bereményi kalapja

The heroines of this lyric comedy full of burlesque elements are two girls from a village who get totally engrossed in their day-dreaming. Ida and Rozi escape to the city to catch husbands for themselves.

Hótreál

Pillangó

Gergő’s mother is obsessed with having a grandchild. She has a serious heart disease and has only days left to live. To give his mum some joy during her final hours, Gergő asks his neighbour Saci, who is five months pregnant, to visit his mother in hospital with him and tell her that she is carrying his child. It all goes smoothly, but a new heart arrives, and his mum is operated. Therefore, Gergő and Saci are forced to play the roles of the loving couple.

One day Novák Erzsébet kindergarten-teacher destroys her papers, cuts her hair and closes her mouth forever. She prepares for suicide namelessly, then somewhere around Normafa she accepts being taken into an asylum.

Magasmentés

Hótreál

The hero of the story that takes place at the beginning of the nineteenth century and recalls real historical personages is Akli Miklós, the court jester of Emperor Ferenc.

A man's story parallels Hitler's rise. Austrian Klaus Schneider, wounded in World War I, recovers in the care of Dr. Emil Bettleheim. Bettleheim discovers that Schneider possesses powers of empathy and of clairvoyance, such that could aid suicidal patients. After the war, with one friend as his manager and another as his lover, Schneider changes his name to Eric Jan Hanussen and goes to Berlin, as a hypnotist and clairvoyant performing in halls and theaters. He always speaks the truth, which brings him to the attention of powerful Nazis. He predicts their rise (good propaganda for them) and their violence (not so good). He's in pain and at risk. What is Hanussen's future?

This lavishly spectacular film focuses on the character of Lorinc Parcen Nagy from the 1200-page Tibor Déry novel interwoven with numerous autobiographical elements. Lorinc Parcen Nagy is the offspring of an upper middle class family, whose life is marked by two violent deaths: the suicide of his father and the slaughter of an innocent worker. He breaks with his family and his mother in disgust; she is of weak character, a person who abandoned her own husband. He is also unable to discover the right tone with his colleagues and his lover who is an illegal party worker.

The Buharovs, as the harbingers of a supra-human world, blend their instinctive cosmos with a kind of quiet poetry to lead the viewer into the Land of Warm Waters and onwards to new dimensions of storytelling.

A tale about a strange young man, Bulcsú, and the fellow ticket inspectors on his team who work aboard the subterranean Budapest Metro. A tale about racing along the tracks, and about a mysterious serial killer. And a tale about love.

A tale about a little fox Vuk from the novel of the famous Hungarian writer István Fekete.

Concerning the Mátyás era in Hungarian history, during the reign of Matthias Corvinus (1443–1490), the film focuses on three eras of the king's life: the young Mátyás fights for the throne, the older Mátyás as king, and the fate of the royal crown and the royal heir after his death.

This film, set at the beginning of the 17th century, is the first East-European "Eastern". Bocskai István orders the free Heyducks to shepherd a huge herd of cattle through the country torn to three parts, to the Dalmatian coast, where he can get weapons in exchange, for fighting the Austrians.

In 1944 Budapest, one of a group of four friends poses a hypothetical moral question to the others, an act that will unexpectedly alter their lives forever.

Kántor

The true story of Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian cattle dealer and avowed fascist who — trapped in Nazi-occupied Budapest after Italy's armistice with the Allies — nevertheless saved more than 5,000 Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust through a combination of lies, bribery and derring-do.

The protagonist of the film is Simon, who comes home for his father’s funeral after having spent two years in American and doing nothing. He takes over the management of Simon and his partner’s private investigation office. Everything is torn around his neck, the office, life and Marci - a 14-year-old boy who is also Simon. He is the little son of our hero, and their relationship is very special.

Rózsa Sándor