Death Rode Out of Persia is the story of a writer who realises after three years of heavy drinking that he has to get down to some serious work or risk having no money to continue his bingeing. So he starts a romantic novel in which the principal character (the writer’s young alter ego) must choose between the love of a woman and his addiction to cigarettes and alcohol. According to the director, the film "was produced on a very small budget, but the friendship between the crew allowed them to overcome the initial obstacles.
The tumultuous history of Hungary through the twentieth century is viewed through the saga of the Hungarian-Jewish, furniture-manufacturing family, the Vendels. After taking over the once successful, but now failing, family business in the 1930s, the family patriarch's dashing elder son decides that the family needs an infusion of new blood. A matchmaker presents him with a photo of a pretty German nursery school teacher. When the two meet, they instantly fall in love, but because Hungary has an alliance with Germany, and the Third Reich prohibits marriage between Gentiles and Jews, the couple must hide their union. Their marriage ultimately stands as a dark foreshadowing of rougher times to come as troubles ensue with the advent of World War II, when the family, its employees and servants must retreat to the basement, where the shop emerges increasingly as a refuge in a world growing more violent and less tolerant.
Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias, a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.
