Fanny Kemenes

Filmed in commemoration of Hungary's 1100th anniversary and on the sites of the actual events, a cast of thousands authentically recreates the 896 AD arrival of the Magyar chief Arpad (Nero) and his seven tribes into the Carpathian basin from the steppes.

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.

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.

Contemporary genre-painting of a Hungarian "middle class" family of four. The scene is the villa apartment almost finished, where the tourist guide mother, father who also works for the second economy and the lonely big girl preparing for her maturity examination turn up alternatively. It is only the teen-ager boy who really "lives" in this place: instead of attending school he stays home all day and observes the life of the surrounding by a self-made periscope. Internal communication of the family is accomplished in writing, on the pin-up board in the kitchen.

A semi-autobiographical story of a young woman's life in Budapest under Stalin.

The scene of the story taking place in the 18th century is an inn, which is advertised by its owners for sale. The inn was namely the scene for mysterious disappearances and murders, but the result of all these events, the treasury is hidden and guarded by the mother. Everybody want to get it from her during one night: the inn-keeper couple, the fake couple who arrived as buyers, Colonel Majorossy with his son, the secret agent and the servants.

1918. Fábián Bálint is forced to kill humans on the Italian front. At home his sons drown the priest, the lover of their mother, in the river Kraszna. Mrs. Fábián turns insane. Following his arrival home Bálint becomes the liveried coachman of the baron.

Winter of 1944, the last days of the war. When the roads and houses ceased to exist and the bottom of the cellars become filled with life, when fortunes were lost and countries burned up, her used coat was only important to Mama, the cloak-room servant of a local dance-school. Her son stole it to sell it for twenty pengő. He did it because Aranka Fussbaum's love cost money. There is no honour left in such a destroyed world. Yet still they start looking for that coat... (Elemér Ragályi won Best camera with this movie in Montreal, 1979, and in Budapest, 1980.)

The film tells the story of a regiment of Hungarian hussars stationed in Poland. The hussars, mostly ordinary men, have heard news of the uprising and wish to return to the homeland to defend the newly independent country. The Empire, on the other hand, is firmly resolved that all Hungarian troops in the imperial army should be kept as far away from the trouble spot as possible, knowing that most soldiers would be loyal to Budapest rather than Vienna.

A group of landless Hungarian peasants accept work as migrant-laborers on a farm in northern Germany where the wages are good, and the wives and family are allowed to accompany them. Though it is in the midst of World War II, they are relatively well-off. However, they glimpse the treatment accorded to POWs and others who are not so gently treated, and at the conclusion of the year's harvest, they choose to return to Hungary and are quickly swept up in the tides of war. This film is part of a series of films by award-winning, well-respected director Zoltan Fabri who devoted much time and effort chronicling the struggle against fascism.

"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 Budapest in 1944; a watchmaker, a bookseller, and a carpenter are drinking in a bar with the owner when they are joined by a stranger. The watchmaker asks a hypothetical question that will change their lives.

The corpulent and ageing Ivicz, once an excellent baker, works as a deliverer now. He lives alone. At the weekends following the toilsome weekdays he is the boss. He regularly travels to the country, to work as the incorruptible referee of third class national soccer games.

A ghost is haunting Lubló: Kaszparek Mihály, trader of wines, does not refrain from haunting his native town even in broad daylight. He rides his horse sitting backwards, pays with false gold and pays frequent visits to his widowed wife, who is far from being appalled by the caresses of her dead husband.

After the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young Hungarian, wanted by the police for political crimes, escapes to just this side of the Austrian border. When he discovers that his escape contact has been shot, he disguises himself as a woman and, posing as a maid, takes refuge at a tuberculosis sanatorium. He lives there as a woman for the entire winter before resuming his journey in the spring.

The film is set in Budapest, 1924. Laundryman Ede Minarik's only passion is football. His dream is to see his team, Csabagyöngye, qualify for the first division. For this goal he would be willing to sacrifice everything he has. But he has nothing, even footballers just barely. The team is just like the times. But still, "we need a team!"

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.

This film describes the narrator's childhood, the years before and after the Hungarian Soviet Republic, in a burlesque and fabulous style and with the humour of a child's fantasy.

This Hungarian film chronicles the slow deterioration in the life of Juli, a farmer's wife. As the countryside grows ever more deserted because people are moving to towns or large collective farms, she spends more and more time alone. Despite her best efforts to appreciate her situation, her despair grows. The loneliness is briefly interrupted when she and her husband take in an old woman and care for her, but the woman dies. Shortly after her son visits, she is killed in an accident which may have been a suicide. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

After his divorce, Bóna Péter, a beginner film director needs a bigger amount of money to settle his financial problems with his ex-wife. He travels to Pécs to see Sárika, an old veteran. He has not seen his aunt for a long time, and she receives him very friendly, but she flatly refuses to lend him any money.

After the World War I, enthusiastic young people found the intellectual group of Hungarian Communist Party. Their aim is to propagate the communist ideology to the people and get the workers on their side. They have fierce discussions on the new ideas, though their movement is not very successful. They clash with their opposition, attempt to lead people to the Red Army, but without success.

The film take place in Budapest, in the end of The World War II, telling the story of a young Communist who escaped from prison. The boy tries to revitalise his contact with the movement, but he is told to be quiet and wait.

A 1970 film.

Péter and Pál, two notorious skirt hunters competing in wooing Oana, a pretty Romanian girl on the beach at Tihany. A couple of days later the girl gets a telegram saying that she has to leave for Bucharest immediately. The party - which has increased with Piri, the interpreter, and Ági, the hitch-hiker - gets to a Romanian village by Peter's ramshackle car, a 1921 Colymne. The car, however, breaks down.

An ambitious theatre director arrives in Gyulaháza from the capital. The aim of the young Debrődy is to shake up the locals and turn the life of the town upside down.