Magyar Művészeti Akadémia's 53 Hungarian Films

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 ...

Twenty-year-old Laszlo Sz., a driver's mate steals the money he should have posted and wandering around Budapest, visiting bars, restaurants, pinball parlors and various other places trying to make the day different and meaningful.

In 1950, when a young communist director arrives to take charge of a stud farm near the Hungarian borders, his efforts to draw on the experience of the old hands there meet with little success. Janit Busó is not accepted by the farm workers, who were exiled here and branded as class enemies. Busó tries to gain authority, which is not easy among ...

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.

PFC Molnár decides his WWII services are over, and with serious money hidden in his hand grenades, he heads to an abandoned mansion where he encounters not only the sour butler but a bunch of others who also try to wimp out of their duties.

In the final days of the American Civil War, an emigre Hungarian military officer attempts to map the situation of the enemy. Many veterans of the 1848 War of Independence in Hungary fought on the northern side. Experienced Fiala, Boldogh who struggles with homesickness and the reckless Vereczky all experience their enforced emigration in differ...

Vera Angi works as a nurse in a hospital after WWII in communist Hungary. Because she speaks up about the terrible conditions in which the nurses and doctors have to work, she's placed in a six-month education course.

An orphan girl suffers abuse from her adoptive parents.

In Budapest in 1944, a watchmaker, a book seller and a carpenter are drinking in a bar with the owner. They are joined by a stranger who asks a hypothetical question that will change their lives.

A tale of twin girls, Dóra and Lili, who are born in 1880 Budapest at the same moment Thomas Edison presents his electric lightbulb to the world. The sisters are soon orphaned and separated in childhood, and follow different paths: one grows up to be a naïvely idealistic, bomb-toting anarchist, the other a pampered, hedonistic courtesan. Their p...

The poetic love story depicting everyday life from a micro-psychological aspect takes place in the 1910s. Sándor, editor of the local paper, serves as a foot soldier on Sundays, but spends weekdays playing billiard and courting women. One Sunday afternoon - in soldier's uniform - he meets Vilma, the beautiful maid, whose honesty and chastity tur...

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.

Csontvary Kostka Tivadar was a Hungarian painter, and the actor Latinovitsj Zoltan, who was originally slated to play him in the film, committed suicide during the preliminary planning.

The young maid, Anna starts to work for the noble Vizy family. Mrs Vizy is proud of the hard-working servant but doesnt treat her well. Her nephew seduces Anna with sweet words, but when leaves her as soon as she gets pregnant. The humiliations of Anna finally lead to a tragic ending.

On the novel by Mór Jókai. The first half of the XVIII century. Several decades of life of a noble family Karpati.

A deep drama about life in Hungary after the WW2 until the revolt against Russians in '56. The main character is the head of the black market in Budapest. He thinks he can buy everyone and everything but at the end he must face that he can't buy life. A must-see for everyone. Casting involves some of the greatest Hungarian actors. The story take...

A simple, religious Hungarian woodcutter lives with his wife and boy child with a small community of squatters among the peaceful mountains of Transylvania until a lumber company claims their land and forces them all to become company workers or else leave the land. This 1942 Hungarian film takes a detailed and unflinching look at the hardships ...

A Hungarian soldier returning from fighting in the Second World War marries the woman he believes to be the widow of a former comrade who he thinks died in the POW camp in which they were held.

An aspiring film student is denied a scholarship to the state-funded university when his father is thrown in jail. The man had stopped a train in order to facilitate the union between two old friends. The son then takes a job as a land surveyor and meets a Greek man who works towards the collective benefits of the peasants. The man is killed in ...

The documentary-feature film, featuring amateur players and showing the life of three sisters in its simple dull flow of events, has grown to be the symbol of the Budapest School. The Kertész-girls live in a little apartment in a block of flats in Budapest with their parents. At the beginning of the film, each talks about her dream-future. They ...

Two actors wandered from house to house in the countryside in the roles of the photographer and the retoucher business man offering their photographic services to the people.

A school teacher becomes a momentary hero after having rescued a stuffed-bird from a school incident.

Three people – a returned prisoner of war, his beautiful second wife, and the possessive, hunchbacked spinster who is his sister-in-law by his first marriage – are isolated in a little house under an extinct volcano, where each strives for personal happiness but is suffocated by their dependence on the others.

Andras Kovacs' film, considered one of the most important Hungarian films of the 1960s, centers around four men who await trial for their involvement in the massacre of several thousand Jewish and Serbian people of Novi Sad in 1942. Each denies any responsibility, claiming that they were only following orders. The film is significant for its wil...

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 w...

A crusading newspaper reporter covers the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Initially critical of the communists, the feature later espouses the virtues of the social changes implemented since the invasion. The title refers to the period of time the reporter spent interviewing witnesses to the invasion.

Evergreen comedy about a typical parvenu, an ignorant transportation entrepreneur who has suddenly found himself very rich. Despite their humble origins, his wife strives to live a sophisticated lifestyle. When she engages a butler, Hyppolit, their whole life is turned upside down. It has remained one of the most viewed Hungarian comedies of all...

Juli is a 17-year-old student who takes a summer job in a local chemical factory. She is befriended by Piri, a girl with an unsavory reputation who has worked there before. The two friends are ogled by male workers who have overactive libidos and imaginations. Juli spurns the advances of a deluded Romeo while Piri continues to work and endure op...

The film is a documentary-feature film based on real stories and made with amateur actors. The district pioneer secretary is assigned to find a pioneer who can play a musical instrument, has a working-class background, and studies well at school and appoint him for a one-month-long premium holiday in Britain. He finds a guitarist, Balogh Tibi, i...

To celebrate Hitler's birthday, a soccer match is organised between the Germans and a group of Hungarian political prisoners, one of whom is a famous pre-war football star.

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. ...

Set in the "Golden Era" of the wandering Hungarian theatre troupes. Mariska and Liliomfi fall in love without suspecting that Mariska's foster father, Professor Szilvay, is also Liliomfi's uncle. Soon the couple must contend with the professor's plan to make Liliomfi give up his "unrespectable" profession of acting by exposing the professor's hy...

A young peasant boy stands up to tyranny, aided by his trusting friend- a goose.

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 treat...

A Budapest high school in the beginning of the 1960s. Dini suffers the torments of adolescence. His father had to leave Hungary after the uprise in 1956, and since then Dini's mother has had to take care of her two sons on her own. A friend of Dini’s father, Bodor, is released from prison and moves in with them. Dini and his brother are far from...

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 ...

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

Narcisus and Psyche is based on a novel by Sandor Weores which was adapted by Vilmos Csaplar and director Gabor Body for a feature-length film. Borrowing the character of Psyche from mythology and placing her in Europe in the 19th century, the authors give her a "modern" life. She is an attractive young woman - and remains so throughout the film...

A young doctor undergoes a spiritual crisis when he returns to his rural home.

Based on a novel by Dezso Kosztolani, this Hungarian drama is set at the turn of the 20th century. A young, homely woman lives at home with her mother and retired father. Because of all the care the girl provides for her parents, the couple becomes detached from the world outside their home. When the girl leaves for a short visit to her uncle's ...

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.

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!"

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 pol...

A group of students cope with the disappearance of their friend.

Set in a detention camp in Hungary in 1869 at a time of guerilla campaigns against the ruling Austrians.

The wife of a political prisoner tends to her mother-in-law and keeps from the old woman the truth about her son, whom she believes is in New York making a film.

Based on the stories of Hungarian writer Gyula Krúdy, this iconic film is a lush and sensuous depiction of the life, loves and memories of serial seducer Szindbád.

The seeming hopelessness of combatting an all-powerful government that will not tolerate political dissension is the focus of this excellent historical drama set in the mid-19th century in Hungary. In the opening scenes, Hungary has just lost its bid for independence from Austria and a Magyar officer, unable to bear the tragedy of defeat and wha...

In 1905 Hungary, a young village woman has just undergone a marriage to the spoiled son of a man to whom her father is indebted, in order that the debt be cancelled, only to be spirited away by her true love, a young peasant, by whom she soon becomes pregnant. Together they attempt to find a way to buy up her father's debt and also pay for a div...

The Hungarian Oh, Bloody Life reflects on the heavy emotional toll taken by the repressive Stalin regime. Dorotya Udvaros plays a young actress from a high-born family. The government bias against persons of wealth threatens to destroy her career before it begins. As a final blow, she is threatened with deportation. The exasperation inherent in ...