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Hungary’s 30% tax incentive for film and TV, which has helped attract recent Hollywood shoots like “Dune: Part Two,” “Maria” and “The Brutalist” to the country, has been extended by six years.

Hungary, continental Europe’s biggest production hub, has attracted direct annual production spend totalling $910 million, a fourfold increase in the last five years.

The extension of the tax incentive was revealed on Monday in Los Angeles by government commissioner for the development of the Hungarian film industry, Csaba Kael, who was in the city to reveal the winners of Hungarian Film Institute’s inaugural awards for Best International Production Filmed in Hungary.

Originally launched in 2004, the Hungarian film support scheme has contributed to such Hollywood films as “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” “A Good Day to Die Hard,” “The Martian” and “Terminator: Dark Fate.” Other international productions to have filmed in Hungary include “Poor Things,” Ridley Scott’s “Alien: Romulus,...

Beta Film has released a swashbuckling, pulse-pounding trailer for “Rise of the Raven,” its epic 10-part drama series based on the bloody 15th-century battle that changed the course of Europe. The show will world premiere at Mipcom in the Grand Auditorium of Cannes’ Palais des Festivals on Oct. 22.

Adapted from author Bán Mór’s bestselling novels, the series tells the story of the Hungarian warrior Janos Hunyadi, who defeated the Ottoman army in 1456 at the Battle of Belgrade, halting its march across Europe and marking a turning point in the history of the continent.

The series is produced by veteran Canadian producer Robert Lantos’ Serendipity Point Films and Beta Film, the production and distribution powerhouse behind series including “Gomorrah” and “Babylon Berlin.” The Munich-based company is also repping the show internationally as part of a packed Mipcom slate.

In a trailer shared exclusively with Variety, Hunyadi (Kádár L. Gellért) delivers...

“Rise of the Raven,” the anticipated European event series from Beta Film, behind “Babylon Berlin” and “The Swarm,” and producer Robert Lantos, will world premiere at Cannes content trade fair Mipcom on Oct. 22.

Beta Film has shared in exclusivity with Variety a first teaser to the series, which is a bracing introduction to the scale and ambition of “Rise of the Raven’s” production values, as well as the brutality of its battles scenes as it tells in an 10-part epic the extraordinary real-life feat of Hungarian army commander Janos Hunyadi, played by discovery Gellért L. Kádár, who turned back the tide of the Ottoman Empire’s seemingly unstoppable advance into Europe.

This looks set to climax in the series as in history in 1456 when Hunyadi won a bloody Battle of Belgrade against a vast Ottoman force twice the size of his troops who were sometimes armed with just slings and patriotic fervor.

When you’ve experienced a certain amount of loss, it can be hard to invest in new relationships. Since the emergence of Covid, this is something that many more people will relate to. For architect Fáni (Franciska Töröcsik), who lost her father at an early age, the merest thought of hooking up with an attractive man leads her to experience a lurid vision of his death. Is this something supernatural or simply psychological? It doesn’t really matter. It still makes her far too uncomfortable to embark on a relationship, much to the concern of her influencer best friend Zsanett (Adél Csobot) and her older female relatives.

Bright-eyed and perky, albeit slightly clumsy and prone to bouts of foolishness, Fáni is not a woman who struggles to get male attention. When her new co-worker also turns out to be her new neighbour, it seems that fate may be conspiring to make her change.

Italian writer-director Emma Dante’s “Misericordia” has won the top prize at the Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn, Estonia. Adapted from her own play, her third feature tells the story of a young man (Simone Zambelli) with learning difficulties, cared for by a group of sex workers on an island, protecting him from the cruelty of his abusive father. It’s a raw portrait of a marginalized group of people, mixing natural beauty of the locations with the grime of everyday existence.

Zambelli also took the award for best actor, for his role as the man-child at the center of the drama. The best actress prize was shared by Lubna Azabal, who plays a teacher in Jawad Rhalib’s “Amal,” and Kim Higelin, who stars in the controversial French drama “Consent,” directed by Vanessa Filho, as a teenager having an affair with a manipulative and exploitative 50-year-old writer.

The...

by Alex C. DeleonBudapest Noir is above all a film noir, and exceptional in that it is the first and only Hungarian film noir. However, it is equally exceptional in that it is the first ever film noir based squarely on Jewish content and premises. A kind of “Kosher Noir” so to speak.

The story is set in 1936 Budapest when Hungarian antisemitism is beginning to emerge under Nazi German influence. An unidentified young prostitute is murdered under puzzling circumstances. The police investigation is superficial but the single clue as to her identity is a Jewish prayer book found in her purse. The police are discouraged from following up on the investigation but a dogged crime reporter is intrigued and follows it up on his own to the consternation of the chief of Police who is basically under pressure from above to dump it and close the case.

It will turn...

'Don't Breathe' movie: Dylan Minnette is a burglar who discovers that blind man Stephen Lang is not quite like former blind film victims Audrey Hepburn ('Wait Until Dark') and Mia Farrow ('Blind Terror'). 'Don't Breathe' movie review: Fede Alvarez succeeds with horror thriller-love story mix Horror filmmaker Fede Alvarez avoids the fate of the sophomore curse with his second feature film, Don't Breathe, which establishes the director of the 2013 remake of the iconic Evil Dead as the real deal when it comes to genre films that keep audiences on the edge of their dampened theater seats. Co-written by Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues, at only 88 minutes Don't Breathe is not only meticulously paced, but also remarkably clever in how it handles its characters and their motivations, and its audience and their expectations – titillating, but never quite letting either have exactly what they want.