Thirty-year-old Irén dreams of a separate apartment so she can move in with her lover, the married Attila. Hope is sparked by one of the man’s acquaintances, the construction contractor Hevesi, but in order to apply for the larger apartment, she must first enter into a marriage of convenience with the young Gábor. Irén takes out a loan on her modest kindergarten teacher salary, wanders through the mazes of socialist bureaucracy, while Hevesi and her nominal husband harass her with sexual offers, and by the time the day of moving in is within reach, it turns out that Attila doesn’t want to leave his family after all.
Tag: HUNGARY
A young boy strays through a wrought-iron gateway into an overgrown garden filled with insects and birds. Amidst the sculptures of Antiquity, he glimpses a mermaid-like woman in a wheelchair and begins to follow her. The film consisting of engraving-like drawings is a surrealistic coming of age tale played out on the boundary of this world and the realm of myths.
The film made for the centenary of the birth of poet Endre Ady is set in the golden age of peace before the outbreak of the First World War. By depicting the silence preceding the suffocating storm at the beginning of the century, the director expresses the public mood of his own time in impactful animated images.
Péter Tímár, visionary developer of a unique filmmaking perspective in his graphics and effects period, directed this short in the experimental film group of Balázs Béla Studio, in which he investigates human sight through five topics: anatomy, photo-sensitivity, contour, refraction and resonance. The result is a fascinating experimental film packed with cinematic reflections far removed from scientific demonstration and didactic intent.
An animated urban tabloidshort about late socialism in the Kádár era, based on interviews with passersby. Its title, which combines the words “report” and “portrait,” features exclusively talking heads and offers an overview of the living conditions, opinions, and plans of Budapest residents of different backgrounds and ages during the János Kádár era.
The porajmos, that is, the Roma holocaust, is an area of 20th century history that is still not fully explored. There are no accurate details on the number of victims and not a single Gypsy witness was called at the Nuremberg Trials. In 1981, this documentary by József Lakatos was one of the first to use the tools of motion pictures to draw attention to this devastating historical trauma. The film honours the forgotten dead through the input of a historian and the recording of accounts by survivors.
After killing his abusive father, a troubled teenager becomes the focus of a police investigation that unravels the emotional scars, fractured family bonds, and shattered dreams that led to the shocking crime.
György Kovásznai transposes this Jules and Jim-inspired love triangle into his own world, centering it on a circle of young intellectuals who drift through the streets of Budapest and gather in cafés. The film imitates the personal tone of the diaries with the use of painted black and white photo retouching.