Hungary

The Fifth Seal (Az ötödik pecsét) is a 1976 film by Hungarian director Zoltán Fábri based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Hungarian author Ferenc Sánta. It won the Golden Prize at the 10th Moscow International Film Festival and it was entered into the 27th Berlin International Film Festival. It tells a story set in the closing days of World War II in which five friends meet in a local cafe in Hungary. When one of them makes a disparaging political remark that is overheard and reported to the Arrow Cross soldiers, their own beliefs about freedom and dignity are tested when they are imprisoned, tortured and offered freedom only if they slap the face of a dying Communist partisan.Read More »

imdb wrote:
The heroes of the story, which takes place in the present, are young people about to graduate. After prom, the fourth-graders escape to a private party, then return to school together for a farewell spree, during which a fire breaks out in the classroom. Due to the style of school investigation, students whose human and personal rights have been repeatedly violated leave the school building without permission during class. They are organized with a huge ambition to change the world together. While graduation only affects them emotionally, the baccalaureate exam turns them into individuals who recognize their individual interests.Read More »

It’s summer in Budapest, high school student Abel is struggling to focus on his final exams, whilst coming to the realisation that he is hopelessly in love with his best friend Janka. The studious Janka has her own unrequited love with married history teacher Jakab—who had a previous confrontation with Abel’s conservative father. The tensions of a polarised society come unexpectedly to the surface when Abel’s history graduation exam turns into a national scandal.Read More »

The story of two elderly sisters who exchange letters, and through brief flashbacks we see glimpses of their younger years.Read More »

Shot in 1972, this remarkable documentary was released ten years later and had its first Western film festival screenings last year. “Gyula Gazdag is an outstanding Hungarian talent who seems to specialize in getting into trouble. This film, which he made with Judit Ember, another alert and sensitive director, was banned for ten years. In it, a rural community is in financial trouble and an expert from Budapest is sent to advise and reorganize. He is successful but his manner angers the local committee. Despite their own management failure, they feel his arrogance should be the subject of a reprimand at least.Read More »

Synopsis
Judit Ember returns to follow the life of Nóra Szabó, the heroine of her documentary film 𝘛𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘰̈𝘳𝘵𝘦́𝘯𝘦𝘵 (“Instructive Story”, 1975). The troubled young woman who formerly attempted to commit suicide by jumping off a fourth floor is now an unmarried and pregnant mother with two children. Her own mother also brought up her children in similar circumstances, in a closed community without men. But Jenő, the unflaggingly energetic labourer and father of Nóra’s third, as yet unborn child, brings change into their lives.Read More »

After nine years of preparation and five and a half days of shooting, the film was immediately banned and apart from a few secret screenings, it spent several years in a box. Nevertheless, there are not many films that can be said to have changed history the way this one did. By allowing the people in the movie to talk, the director gave them a chance to start the rehabilitation of the tortured, humiliated village. The film’s cameraman and the lawyer who asked for a reopening of the case in 1988, ultimately succeeding in the villagers’’ acquittal, will also participate in the discussion.Read More »

Due to the lack of jobs and any cultural life, the small village in Baranya gets deserted.
There is only one family to stay on: the Kántors. The old lady, Erzsi has always lived here and she wants
to die here. Anti is employed in the log industry and is paid well but a long way away from home.
When Andriska is admitted to a boarding-school in the town and leaves the house, Juli starts feeling very
lonely and depressed. She tries to escape to her religious belief, but her anguish overwhelms her.
She becomes very confused and her life ends tragically in a cleft…Read More »

Quote:
A strange, beautiful and critically-acclaimed film by Gyula Gazdag, A Hungarian Fairy Tale begins at a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute where a beautiful young woman meets a handsome stranger and, transported by the music, they share one night of love. The son born of this magic night is raised by his mother but at the age of three, must be given a father’s name, even a fictitious one, according to Hungarian law. Years later, the engaging Andris sets out to find his “father” as his “father” begins a separate journey.Read More »