János Koltai

Hungarian Passion

The film, taking place in 1950, presents the story of Father Leopold and the monks of his order struggling to once again revive Christianity in a country trying to scrape itself together after the war. Initially, the communist powers do not hinder their work, and the Church was even able to regain possession of holy objects hidden during the war. This "peaceful" state does not last long. Father Leopold is arrested on trumped up charges, and in order to break him, he is subjected to cruel torture. His former student, Lieutenant Keller, who turned his back on religion and now believes in the socialist system, is appointed - upon the command of Major Fyodorov - to extract a confession of guilt. But the Father's perseverance and resistance changes everything.

Randevú Budapesten

Szomszédok

Szomszédok was a Hungarian television series, occasionally called the Hungarian Dallas, that ran from 1987–1999 and produced 331 episodes, airing its grand finale on December 31, 1999. The series was a soap opera, dealing with the lives of ordinary people, living and working in or around an average lakótelep. Its characters were explored, over time, in equal depth: ranging from elderly pensioners, busy middle aged professionals, up-and-coming young people, and children growing into their teens. Many consider Szomszédok to be the definitive Hungarian television series, being a period piece of sorts that covers the last few years of the communist era, the rendszerváltozás, and nearly a decade of the new market economy Hungary thereafter.

Incident ​at Vichy

In the streets of Vichy, France, during World War II, the Germans capture nine men and a boy. Among them are a painter, a businessman, an electrician, a waiter, an army doctor, an actor, a prince, a gypsy, a Jew. None of them know why they were locked up, they can only guess. The most plausible version is that the Jews were deported to concentration camps in Germany. Some believe it, others don't. Waiting to be interrogated, they talk about the political situation, faith, the impact of Nazi propaganda, power, logic, innocence, guilt, illusions, death, racial discrimination, indifference, hope, the possibility of escape, their individual situation, their lives. They try to develop their own survival techniques in theory.

Hungarians

A group of landless Hungarian peasants accept work as migrant-laborers on a farm in northern Germany where the wages are good, and the wives and family are allowed to accompany them. Though it is in the midst of World War II, they are relatively well-off. However, they glimpse the treatment accorded to POWs and others who are not so gently treated, and at the conclusion of the year's harvest, they choose to return to Hungary and are quickly swept up in the tides of war. This film is part of a series of films by award-winning, well-respected director Zoltan Fabri who devoted much time and effort chronicling the struggle against fascism.

Sakk, Kempelen úr!

Blindfold

The scene is Ukraine. In 1943, after the Hungarian' defeat at the river Don, soldier Balogh decides to visit his family.

The Myth-Makers

Eighteen years after the failure of the revolution and freedom fighting 1848-49, the politicians of Hungary preparing for a compromise with Austria try to make use of the symbol of the revolution, the figure of the poet Petőfi Sándor, to their own advantage. They visit all the memorial sites, find the witnesses and recall the famous events. Memories and political intentions conflict with each other, and the circumstances of the poet's death cannot be reconstructed entirely.

Dead Landscape

This Hungarian film chronicles the slow deterioration in the life of Juli, a farmer's wife. As the countryside grows ever more deserted because people are moving to towns or large collective farms, she spends more and more time alone. Despite her best efforts to appreciate her situation, her despair grows. The loneliness is briefly interrupted when she and her husband take in an old woman and care for her, but the woman dies. Shortly after her son visits, she is killed in an accident which may have been a suicide. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Agnus Dei

Allegory of the suppression of the 1919 revolution and the advent of fascism in Hungary; in the countryside, a unit of the revolutionary army spares the life of father Vargha, a fanatical priest. He comes back and leads massacres. A new force, represented by Feher, apparently avenges the people, but only to impose a different, more refined and effective kind of repression.

Judgement

The film is a historic parable about the topicality of revolution. 1514. The peasants' uprising is over, Dózsa has been arrested. Werbőczy tries to get the imprisoned peasant leader deny the revolution and offers him the lives of his people in exchange.

On Home Grounds

This ironic comedy is set in the god-forsaken Kiskúnbékás, at the end of the fifties. There are no jobs, the town's "golden team", who once were third class national soccer players have scattered