Mephisto

Mephisto 1981

7.20

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.

1981

Colonel Redl

Colonel Redl 1985

6.80

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.

1985

The Red and the White

The Red and the White 1967

7.10

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.

1967

The Witness

The Witness 1979

8.10

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.

1979

The Fifth Seal

The Fifth Seal 1976

8.10

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.

1976

The Round-Up

The Round-Up 1966

7.30

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.

1966

Red Psalm

Red Psalm 1972

6.20

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.

1972

Hanussen

Hanussen 1988

6.10

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?

1988

Merry-Go-Round

Merry-Go-Round 1956

7.80

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.

1956

The Bride Was Beautiful

The Bride Was Beautiful 1987

2.00

The teenage boy, Giuseppe, lives with his mother in Cammarata, a Sicilian mountain village. His father left the family years ago, and has since then settled down as a guest worker in West-Germany and established a family. Under local moral rules, Maria is a so-called "white widow", who must stay faithful to her husband even if he never returns to her again. Maria and the newly arrived young doctor fall in love with each other. Their happiness is frowned upon not only by Giuseppe, but the entire village as well as the distant husband.

1987

The Annunciation

The Annunciation 1984

5.70

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.

1984

The Girl

The Girl 1968

6.70

A young woman leaves a state orphanage to find her mother in this interesting examination of how the overt repression of women in the older pattern of village life has been replaced by the more subtle exploitation inherent in the apparently freer existence of young girls in the contemporary city.

1968

Father

Father 1966

6.60

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.

1966

Dear Emma, Sweet Böbe

Dear Emma, Sweet Böbe 1992

6.10

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.

1992

Silence and Cry

Silence and Cry 1968

7.10

Set 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. Due to the generosity of these women and a former childhood pal...

1968

Another Way

Another Way 1982

5.60

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.

1982

The Fly

The Fly 1980

7.10

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.

1980

The Outsider

The Outsider 1981

6.00

A talented but irresponsible violinist ruins his marriage with his drinking and antisocial behaviour.

1981

The Toth Family

The Toth Family 1969

6.90

The Toth family resides in Northern Hungary. The couple has a daughter and a son, the latter a member of the armed forces. When his weary major is ordered to take a vacation, the son talks him into a visit to his family home. Comedy ensues when the Toths go overboard trying to make things pleasant for the visiting major in hopes of an easier life for their son the soldier.

1969

Diary for My Children

Diary for My Children 1984

7.00

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.

1984