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.
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.
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.
Set during the fading glory of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the film tells of the rise and fall of Alfred Redl, an ambitious young officer who proceeds up the ladder to become head of the Secret Police only to become ensnared in political deception.
After the failure of the Kossuth's revolution of 1848, people suspected of supporting the revolution are sent to prison camps. Years later, partisans led by outlaw Sándor Rózsa still run rampant. Although the authorities do not know the identities of the partisans, they round up suspects and try to root them out by any means necessary.
In 1919, Hungarian Communists aid the Bolsheviks' defeat of Czarists, the Whites. Near the Volga, a monastery and a field hospital are held by one side and then the other.
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.
Political and sexual repression in Hungary, just after the revolution of 1956. In 1958, the body of Eva Szalanczky, a political journalist, is discovered near the border. Her friend Livia is in hospital with a broken neck; Livia's husband, Donci, is under arrest. In a flashback to the year before, we see what leads up to the tragedy. Eva gets a job as a writer. She meets Livia and is attracted to her. Livia feels much the same, but as a married woman, has doubts and hesitations. In their work, they (and Eva in particular) bang up against the limits of telling political truths; in private, they confront the limits of living out sexual and emotional truth.
Hungary, 1950s. József Pelikán, who works as a dam keeper on the Danube, meets by chance Zoltán Dániel, an old friend whom he saved from death years before and who is now a powerful politician.
A young knight sets out to join King Richards crusaders. Along the way, he encounters The Black Prince who captures children and sells them as slaves to the Muslims. It is Robert Narra's sworn duty to protect the children and lead them to safety.
Andras Kovacs' film, considered one of the most important Hungarian films of the 1960s, centers around four men who await trial for their involvement in the massacre of several thousand Jewish and Serbian people of Novi Sad in 1942. Each denies any responsibility, claiming that they were only following orders. The film is significant for its willingness to address the subject of Hungary's role in WWII, which was taboo at the time of the its release.
In a rural scenery in the throes of difficult changes lives a humble but promising young farmer girl called Mari Pataki. Her father forbids her from seeing the man she loves. The father, above all preoccupied by work on the fields and prospective wealth, decides to give his daughter in marriage to an old but rich man with whom he does business. Land marries land, he says. This seems to be the unyielding rule of the Hungarian peasantry. But the young lover is ready to stand up to any challenge to keep Maris love.
Savanyú and his friend work at a plant. After the monotonous shifts they engage in the pleasures of the afternoon and the night, i.e. parties and concerts. Savanyú dates Juli, they are already engaged. The young men live as sub-tenants, the young women in workers' hostels. None of these places are suited for spending time together. They are in need of an apartment. Out of the ruinous apartment which they lay siege on, however, they are sent away by the otherwise friendly policeman. At a concert held in the Park of Youth, Juli gets to know Géza. They flirt, then go to the country with a pop-group. Savanyú and his friends follow them. A minor fight cools the atmosphere.
A talented but irresponsible violinist ruins his marriage with his drinking and antisocial behaviour.
This romantic and grandiose historical film depicts the era of the constant incursions and heroic battles fought by the defenders of the castle of Eger, led by captain István Dobó, against the heavy odds of superior numbers through the lives and love of Bornemissza Gergely and Cecey Éva. Gergely is inaugurated as a fighter already at the age of 7, when he escapes the captivity of the half-eyed Turk, Jumurdzsak, with Vica and the war-booty. In thirty years' time he becomes the first assistant of captain Dobó and the brain of the castle in the defence of Eger.
A fine day in the life of a fly presented completely from the fly's point of view. A fine day until something dreary happens, that is.
The beginning shows Hungary devastated by the war and the postwar reconstruction with its communist government. Our hero (played first by Dániel Erdély and later, as a young man, by András Bálint) is clearly determined to find out what he can about his father who died young. All he knows is that he was a doctor and perhaps he was an honored victim of fascism. He never really finds out but his relationship with his mother, his friends and his Jewish girlfriend will make him totally independent of this need to find all about Apa or Father.
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?
In the aftermath of World War II, a Hungarian teenager, captured by Soviet troops, forms an unlikely bond with a Russian soldier in a remote prison camp.
Using verite conventions, a young couple with a baby and a child are worn away by the monotony of their lives.
