Eastern European Emporium

The family waits for the returning brother. The young revolutionary emerges from behind the brow of the hill holding a fluttering flag. The enemies fight a bloody battle. The hero and his battalion suffers defeat. The young fighter is imprisoned, but the slogan "Proletars of the world, unite!" makes him escape. He raises a new army around the preserved flag. News are read out back home when the young brother comes home. The two brothers embrace each other. A revolutionary mob proceeds on the street.

A butler changes the life of a nouveau-riche entrepreneur's life, while his daughter falls in love with the company's manager instead of a suitor chosen for her.

This adaptation of Lajos Zilahy's novel about a fatal love triangle was the first film of Katalin Karády who became a star overnight.

A woodcutter moves his wife and son onto a mountain for an attempt at a better life but tragedy soon sets in.

It tells the story of Mari, an austerely beautiful young peasant girl played by the French star, Annabella. Mari is seduced beneath a flowering tree by the admirer of one of the daughters of the prosperous family for whom she works, becomes pregnant and is cast out.

Mariska and Liliomfi fall in love without suspecting that Mariska's foster father 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.

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.

When a Latin teacher publishes an essay on the Carthaginian General Hannibal, he is quickly hailed as a celebrity genius, but in reality has become an unwitting pawn of far-right politicians.

The setting is the countryside, where an independent, landowning farmer busies himself in his free time by bedding down the women on his farm and then tossing them aside. One such ill-treated lass ends up marrying a young man who is in charge of a communal farm, a farm the womanizing "beast" of the title is later forced to join. The arrogant, formerly independent farmer does not reform his ways and is soon chasing after the young manager's wife, the woman he dropped not that long ago.

In the final days of WWII, a seventeen-year-old boy wanders the countryside. He is captured by Soviet troops, then released, then captured once more - after he has donned a German uniform for warmth - and imprisoned at a remote barracks, where he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young Russian soldier. His attempts to return home form the crux of this wonderfully lyrical film, which displays all of the director's consistent themes: the psychological presence of landscape, the randomness of violence, the arbitrary nature of power.

During World War II, PFC Molnár decides his military service is over, and with a serious amount of money hidden in hand grenades, he heads to an abandoned mansion where he encounters not only the sour butler but a bunch of others who are also trying to wimp out on their duties.

In Hungary, the national movement led by Kossuth has been crushed and the Austrian hegemony re-established, but partisans carry on with violent actions. In order to root out the guerilla, the army rounds up suspects and jails them in an isolated fort. The authorities do not have the identity of the guerilla leaders, who are supposed to be present among the prisoners. However, they know enough about some of the suspects to apply perfidious forms of coercion effectively.

Set in 1946, this movie deals with the planning and execution of the January, 1942 Novi Sad massacre of 4,000 Yugoslavian Serbs and Jews by Hungarian army units. It was undertaken as a reprisal for a partisan ambush (in which 17 soldiers were gunned down). And it is mainly explored through the reminiscences of four participants--Major Buky, Lieutenant Tarpataki, Ensign Pozdor, and Corporal Szabonow--cell-mates awaiting trial. Ultimately, however, what you get is an extended debate over issues of individual responsibility.

A boy in Budapest loses his father in 1945, when he was the age of six. He does not remember much of the father but fantasizes that he performed various heroic feats.

During the Russian Civil War, the Red Army - aided by Hungarian Communists - and the White Army fight for control of the area surrounding the Volga.

Miklós Jancsó's Silence and Cry is 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, who is now a commandant of the local Royal Gendarme outfit, István is safely hidden from the ever-prying eyes of the secret policemen, who relentlessly roam the countryside searching for ex-Red Army men and their sympathisers. However, upon discovering that the women are secretly poisoning the mother-in-law and the husband, the legal owners of the farm, István must make the most difficult decision of his life. As a personal war is waging within his own consciousness over morality and self-preservation, István must decide whether to remain silent about the women's devious secret and preserve his own life, or to report their heinous crime to the Royal Gendarme, which would also mean certain death for him.

Banned for over a decade for its outspoken criticism of the post-WWII communist regime in Hungary, Péter Bacsó's 'The Witness' has since then achieved unparalleled cult status in its native land. Known as the best satire about communism, 'The Witness' has become a cult classic, which was also well received by critics and general audiences alike when it was finally released outside of Hungary. Its candid and realistic portrayal of the incompetent communist regime has earned great acclaim for both the director and the film itself when it was shown at Cannes Film Festival in 1981. 'The Witness' takes place during the height of the Rákosi Era, which was closely modeled after the ruthless and brutal Stalin regime. The film follows the life of an ordinary dike keeper, József Pelikán, who has been caught for illegally slaughtering his pig, Dezsõ. Instead of doing hard time for his "heinous" crime, Pelikán is elevated into an important position, generally reserved for the communist elite. Of course, Pelikán is utterly clueless about his newfound luck, not to mention his new job. Even his new benefactor, the mysterious Comrade Virág, is reluctant to reveal the real reason behind Pelikán's preferential treatment. Thus, begins Pelikán's hilarious adventure deep within the "sophisticated" communist society. One failure after another the incompetent Pelikán is elevated higher and higher on the communist echelon, all the while remaining completely clueless about his promotions. Until one day, when he gets called for to return the "favour" by falsely testifying against his long-time friend in a mock-up show trial.

An old man is recollecting all the women he met in his youth. An old woman wants them to commit suicide together but changes her mind. The little town has a doctor whose wife can not forget the old man, and the waiter who serves him his dinner doesn't know that Sinbad will soon court her.

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.

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.

In Budapest in 1944, a watchmaker, a book seller 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.

A lonely middle-aged woman wants to give birth to a child, but her acquaintance with dysfunctional teenagers leads her to the idea of adoption.

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.

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.

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka the one-ideaed Hungarian painter was thought to be crazy by his peers, but he eventually became a significant artist.