
Writing
Gyula Hernádi
Acting credits
A collective film made by ten prominent Hungarian filmmakers to express what each of them wishes to bring with them of their own culture and personal experience with Hungary's accession to the European Union.
From Europe Into Europe
2004
6.8A young doctor undergoes a spiritual crisis when he returns to his rural home.
Cantata
1963
6.4In 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.
The Lord's Lantern in Budapest
1999
5.6This 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.
Wake Up, Mate, Don't You Sleep
2003
Behind the camera
7.0In 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.
The Red and the White
1967
1958, Budapest. Gerencsér is a skilled worker at the abattoir, his wife left in 1956. They falls in love with the beautiful Mrs. Hász at the personnel management department, but they only date secretly because of a former relationship of Mária. They go on holiday and travel to the Mátra, just the two of them.
Cry and Cry Again
1987
6.9Zsadányi 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.
Allegro Barbaro
1979
6.3Set 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.
Red Psalm
1972
6.5A 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.
Jesus Christ's Horoscope
1989
6.7When middle-aged Kata realises that her life will only be complete if she has a baby of her own, her longstanding-but-married boyfriend Joska refuses to comply. But by developing an unlikely friendship with the angst-ridden teenage orphan Anna, who is also involved in a controversial relationship, Kata discovers aspects of herself, and her role as a woman, that have gone unexamined throughout her entire, lonely life.
Adoption
1975
7.2After 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.
The Round-Up
1966
7.6When 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.
The Blue Danube Waltz
1992
6.2The movie portrays a peasant revolt in Hungary in the early twentieth century.
Hungarian Rhapsody
1979
6.1Juli, who works in a brick factory, begins a romantic relationship with her boss, to whom she hides the fact that she has a son.
Nine Months
1976
7.1In 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.
My Way Home
1965
7.1Set during a turbulent era of disquiet, fear, persecution and terror, which permeates every corner of post-WWI Hungarian society. In 1919, after just a few months of communist rule the Hungarian Republic of Councils falls victim to a nationalist counter-revolution. Admiral Horthy, leader of the nationalist far right movement, becomes the self-proclaimed regent of Hungary, and assumes power as the legal Head of State. Soldiers of the short-lived Hungarian Red Army are now on the run from relentless secret policemen and patrol units of the nationalist Royal Gendarme. If caught, ex-Red Army soldiers are executed without mercy or proper trial. István Cserzi, a former soldier of the Red Army has fled to the Great Hungarian Plains and has taken refuge on a farm, which is run by two sympathetic women.
Silence and Cry
1968
6.1It 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.
Electra, My Love
1974
5.5Zoltai 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.
Season of Monsters
1987
4.2Waiters’ competition at Heroes’ Square in the late thirties. Dressed as waiters, Kapa and Pepe awake in the bronze chariot of the millennial sculpture group. They drive along the Danube promenade, and on the concrete reinforcement of the demolished Budapest rondella hotel they get involved in a showdown of political background. In the burnt-down Sports Hall the waiters train for a last supper, Pepe and Kapa run around the big laid table with trays in their hands. While doing so, Pepe keeps crying out: "I am the best one, I am the most beautiful one, I am the king, I am the god..." Sitting in a boat on the Danube, a ship goes past them, and the Niagara falls, majestic and breathtaking, resound in their ears. On each passing away something new will come to life – as rapped by Sub Bass Monster.
Last Supper at the Arabian Gray Horse
2001
7.2Croatian anarchists collaborate with Hungarians to make a bid for the life of King Alexander of Yugoslavia.
Winter Wind
1969
5.0Allegory 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.
Agnus Dei
1971
NRThe relationship of István Kozár and his wife has reached the point where neither is prepared to hear even a single word from the other. The woman travels to the countryside because she needs a little time by herself. The next morning the police inform the man that his wife has died. István, who has fantasized on more than one occasion about strangling the woman, soon finds himself being investigated by detectives who expect a confession from him.
The Last Judgement But One
1979
5.2A historical drama set in the 1400s, a young man sent to Italy but is forced back after his father's mysterious death.
The Tyrant's Heart, or Boccaccio in Hungary
1981
6.5In post-WWII Hungary, a group of Communist college students arrive at a Catholic seminary hoping to engage in peaceful debate with its students.
The Confrontation
1969
4.9Kapa, Pepe and Mesi would like to buy a scrapyard of trains, to start a nostalgia train and earn a lot of money. The capital to start with they want to get from grandpa, who has come home from America with a suitcase full of money. Everybody wants Mesi to approach the old man, because she is the only one he would speak to. But Mesi is more concerned with the idea that she wants a child, by now from anyone, while Pepe is jealous. Kapa’s alleged son emerges, with the mafia behind him: they, too, are eager to get grandpa’s money. After threats and blackmailing, poisoned apples are sent, with only one side of them poisonous. Those dead, by the way, are resurrected by the sound of a song. At last, nobody manages to get the money, but it wouldn’t make sense anyway: it’s all fake. The Statue of Liberty, however, turns out to be blind.
Damn You! the Mosquitoes
2000
6.8A young doctor undergoes a spiritual crisis when he returns to his rural home.
Cantata
1963
6.0By the notes of Fiáth Pompeiusz, the one-time friend of Kapa and Pepe, Professor Szirtes has solved the secret of the time machine, and he realizes the invention relying on "special" H2O. Kapa and Pepe shall return by it into the past in order to set time right, which is out of joint, that is, to correct history, to save King Louis II, and prevent the Mohács Disaster. Pepe yields to the not too tender persuasion to enter upon the great journey through time, dies and revives, and they arrive at the battlefield of Mohács in time. Kapa films the events. The Turks win and cut off the king’s, Pepe’s, head, still the Hungarians dictate the peace treaty. Kapa and Pepe want to return, they fill the time machine up with water from the well, yet it won’t start. Even so Kapa and Pepe hover over Budapest and quarrel.
The Battle of Mohács
2004
4.7From the film-shooting in the Buda Castle Marci and his friend go to a well-paying job. The scene is a big castle in the middle of a huge park. They enjoy the company of the Kid and the beautiful naked French girl, Nathalie. Their job is to watch the monitors on which they can see the Moscow coup détat. By the time Gorbachev is executed the Communist and the Nationalists have taken turns in occupying the castle and the park.
God Walks Backwards
1991
