Ildikó Bánsági

A mysterious death occurs in a retirement home for elderly actors. A neglected old actor, once famous for his Poirot-like roles, begins to investigate. He thoroughly interrogates the suspects, but has no easy task finding the killer among his fellow actors.

Set in 1983, behind the Iron Curtain of Eastern Europe in Budapest, the film follows Frank, the charismatic singer of a banned punk band that carries the voice of their generation against a totalitarian regime. Taken to the police psychiatric hospital in an attempt to silence him, Frank will sacrifice everything to resist.

No synopsis available yet.

A Hungarian journalist who is about to start a family journeys to the United States in the hopes of finding his own father, a scientist who went missing in the 1970s while working on a top secret military research project that examined 'voices' from outer space.

No synopsis available yet.

During the ill-fated Hungarian revolution of 1956, Karcsi Szabo, star player on the water polo team, is torn between his love for a revolutionary student and his training for the Melbourne Olympics.

A Hungarian historical movie that tells the story of the Hungarian ancestors, the seven leaders, who are looking for their new homeland in the last years of the 9th century. Before they leave their original home in Asia, they have a farewell party. They wake up with a severe hangover after consuming large quantities of kumis. The seven leaders wake up to find that their people have disappeared.

Collection of short films the summaries of which include; a foreign man moving to Italy, getting married and having a child; a four split scene short involving plot-less images of old people with television sets for heads, a beautiful woman having sex, and overall confusion; and an old man reminiscing over his youth.

Autumn 1944. Yellow star, ghettos, Arrow Cross terror. The inhabitants of Hungary's capital, Budapest, await the tragic fulfilment of their fate with helpless resignation. However, above one of the city's villas, once a week in the evening the stars of hope sparkle, if only for a few minutes. This short time gives fresh heart to those hiding here and kindles hope in their tortured souls to live for another day. This mysterious power is none other than a beautiful song that can be heard at such times from the villa's tower room.

A collage of human fates, where all shown characters are suffering from panic attacks. Stories like a policeman who is willing to come out or a young business woman who achieved her life goals too early.

The film shows the times directly before and after the revolution of 1956 in a Rosehill villa and its garden, guarded by the state security, from the perspective of a powerful party functionary’s children living there. The children witness a lot of things they do not understand, mysterious things, which they interpret in their own way.

A portrait film in which the actors often employed by Fehér (Ferenc Kállai, Péter Haumann and Ildikó Bánsági, respectively) testify with love and respect about the artist's creative method and his pursuit of perfection.

Our hero, Lajos, a drunken ex-cop in his fifties, back from the jaws of death. His old friend Feri, who is always anxious and wrestling with bad premonitions; and his wife, Etus, who believes in both the omnipotence of love and the afterlife. And, of course, there's their close friend Tibi, in his twenties, who's obsessed with paranormal phenomena and conspiracy theories - especially since his parents were struck by a ball lightning bolt. The four-strong group of friends is bound together by a fascination with esotericism and spiritualism - they are joined by Etus's sister, the recently widowed Évike, who, thanks to Etus's domestic magic, is hopelessly in love with Lajos. Meanwhile, Lajos, who works as a security guard, is in deep trouble: he is granted a two-day reprieve by the underworld-connected art dealer Mr Faragó to settle his debt of millions.

After a mass-collision in the morning rush, people from different backgrounds are forced to directly interact with each other.

Buda, 1851. Jeromos Hétszáz, a puppet maker living in Óbuda, and his wife, Óguszta, a childless couple, have given refuge to the orphans of those fallen in the war of liberty or jailed, most recently to Pál Penyige and Borbála Derelye. Overjoyed when the chief of police orders fifty straw puppets, they are distressed on learning that the puppets will be publicly hanged in effigy of Lajos Kossuth and the leaders of the war of liberty.

Celebrated Swedish opera star Karin Anderson is slated to appear in an internationally-telecast production of Tannhauser. Ms. Anderson balks at the notion of working with obscure Hungarian conductor Zoltan Szanto. The much-anticipated production may never get off the ground, thanks to labor-management difficulties, intramural jealousies, and clashing egos. Amidst all this chaos, the mismatched Anderson and Szanto fall in love.

The story shows Emma's and Böbe's fight for survival, for keeping their position in society which they achieved with hard work in the previous regime. They don't want to lose their place and become village girls again.

This story follows a young student, who is orphaned as she grows to adulthood in the shadow of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Coming from the Communist intelligentsia, she sees her friends and family react differently. Her lover, a married factory manager, supports the patriots and later assists fellow workers in staging a strike. Meanwhile her sister and others express anger at being forced from their homes during the revolution and continue to express a hatred for the rebels afterwards. But in the end they realize that for all people, real life is not possible after the revolt and its brutal suppression by the Soviets and their collaborators.

No synopsis available yet.

A woman and her lover plot to kill her older husband.

It is 1989, the year of the demise of socialism in eastern Europe. Nevertheless, the one theme of Junk Movie does not refer to this historical moment of high ideals, quite the contrary, the wild, burlesque of a motif-mozaic seems merely to stick it’s tongue out at the arrogant players of politics who have their heads stuck in the clouds. The film rudely points out the mystery and unapproachability surrounding the every-day existence of politics. The scene is a greasy, falling-down block of a pub called the Gólya and its immediate surroundings.

The story of a love-triangle is recounted through Anitas memories and jagged monologue. Anita is tremendously naive and in love, Laci is a petty small-town gangster with great powers of persuasion and the secret lover of Szilvi. The three of them leave for Vienna, where Laci sells off the two girls to a peep-show for some small money.

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 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 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?

After having lost her parents, young Juli returns from the Soviet Union to her native Budapest. Scarred by the wounds of the past, the ghost of Stalin’s oppression haunts her as she reunites with her aunt and adoptive mother Magda.

A continuation of "Diary for My Children," the film picks up in 1950, when Juli, the diarist, is 18 and determined to become a movie director.

No synopsis available yet.

Gréti, a German shepherd, searches for her missing puppy.

Janos and Kata are thrown together during the Second World War and forced to pose as husband and wife to hide from the Nazis. The intensity and suffocating intimacy of their new relationship and the circumstances in which they find themselves, forces them to confront past prejudices and assumptions and challenge what they truly believe.

This movie is about the love and protection of a man from another culture for the lowly horsemen of the the plains in Hungary during World War II.

Mici, a pretty young girl is a selected swimmer. Laci, her trainer looks after her jealously, mainly because of her condition.

In the country reformatory school both the teacher and the children are trapped by the circumstances. From among the pupils excels Sanyi, who cannot accept the fact that his mother does not love him and he keeps on escaping after her. From among the teachers it is Mr. Csőrös who distinguishes himself by listening to the children, looking for those who escaped, Sanyi feels affection to him.

Even without a clock, the watch-maker of the small country town always knows the exact time to the second, and for this reason he came to be called Mr. Clock. His wife left him, and he only lives for his work. He is just engaged in repairing the tower clock when his wife returns and the German troops appear.

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The Kondor family lives on the outskirts of Budapest, the father a truck driver abroad. The subtenant wants to act like the head of the family one day, but one of the children thwarts his wedding plans.

No synopsis available yet.

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 most problematic aspect of Zsolt Kézdi-Kovács's films is the political motif of The Right to Hope, which is incomprehensible from a child's point of view and therefore disrupts the unified soul. The film works just as well without it, and it really works without the element of logical incoherence it introduces into the story. All of this highlights a directorial virtue that was rare in this period. Zsolt Kézdi-Kovács is able to dramatise personal conflicts that arise purely from within.

Based on the stories of Hungarian writer Gyula Krúdy, this film is a lush and sensuous depiction of the life, loves and memories of serial seducer Szindbád. As the protagonist looks back on his life, past and present, imagination and reality flow inseparably into one another.

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.

The events of the story take place in the outskirts of working class people in the early nineteen fifties. Makra, a skilled worker in a factory, suddenly comes to close quarters with everything around him because his environment condemns and ridicules him for protecting a woman when his drunk fellows were going to rape her after his bachelor party.

A musical farce about women in the canning factory. The pretty Brigitta tries to commit suicide, because Laci left her, pregnant, but her mates save her.

This absurd story, bordering on the drawing-room comedy, portrays the practices of abusing power and the insolence of bureaucracy through the revolting of a young designer-engineer of the Railway Tilting Examination Board. The ambitious Pócsik works persevearingly on how to compensate for the tilting of railway carriages in bends. His jealous bosses, however, use their best efforts to block the development of an innovation.

No synopsis available yet.

The rich love wealth and believe that if they don't keep accumulating it, the world will collapse. It is this human weakness that Volpone, the old con man, builds on, inventing an unexpected trick to play a sickly old man about to die, who, with the help of his servant and skilful apprentice, tricks the hypocritical but wealthy Venetian citizens into doing anything in the hope of a rich inheritance. How things don't turn out as planned...

István and Jakab are fire-extinguisher experts. They travel the country to check fire-extinguishers at country factories. During their tours of inspection they chase women, drink in dirty pubs and live in clover.

"Budapest Tales" is about a group of people (consisting of Szabo regular Andras Balint along with Ildiko Bansagi and Karoly Kovacs) who find a broken down tram while trying to go to the city. The people band together and try to get the tram back on the train tracks and head towards the city. Along this journey the passengers encounter many people who join them on the tram. What started out as only a handful of people has now turned into a small village. As the people travel on to the city each person takes on certain roles and through the course of time these roles will change. Some people fall in love, others out of love, and a few even die. But life goes on. The people keep the tram going hoping to reach Budapest.

In András Jeles' short film, elements of the present are mixed with the world of Honoré de Balzac's novel Lost Illusions.

No synopsis available yet.

The subject-matter of this comedy is age-old: that of the schizophrenic soul. Papa would have liked boy twins years ago, but her wife gave birth to a single child weighing six kilograms. He would like to dampen his feeling of emptiness by having the boy registered both as Péter and Pál.

The 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.

No synopsis available yet.

Iván Berend is a nobleman from the countryside, owner of considerable wealth. If necessary, he duels and plays cards like his fellow gentry, if necessary, he dances and compliments like most cavaliers. But far from him is this high life. He prefers to lecture on natural history, and does not hesitate to prove his claims by burning a diamond. He runs the Bondavar mine and experiments on a fire extinguishing agent. Evila, the beautiful starlet, and her impetuous fiancé, Peter Szaffrán, work in the mine. They are hired by the Viennese banker Félix Kaulmann to help him with his grand plan for the coal basin, which will ruin Ivan Berend.

No synopsis available yet.