Zoltán Nagy : 2019
Szép csendben

A coming-of-age story set in the contemporary Hungarian countryside. Dávid is the first violinist, the soloist of a youth orchestra. Nóra is a cellist who has just joined the orchestra, several years younger than Dávid. The boy finds out that the orchestra's 60-year-old conductor and music teacher is sexually harassing the insecure newcomer. Dávid wants to protect the girl, but it's not at all easy, because the conductor is his mentor, almost a stepfather. And there is no direct evidence of harassment. Indeed, such things generally happen quietly. Even if any bystanders notice anything, they prefer not to talk about it. While looking for the truth, Dávid's life soon starts to spiral out of control as he faces tough decisions and the adult society's negligence. Zoltán Nagy's feature debut had its international premiere in competition at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2019.

Barnabás Tóth : 2019
Akik maradtak

Hungary after World War II. A 42-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl meet in a city struggling with the ravages and destitution of war. It is 1948, gynecologist Aladár Körner examines Klára, a young girl who is about to turn sixteen and has just entered puberty, which worries her aunt Olga, who lives with her. The doctor, a single man who divides his time between the hospital and the orphanage, soon grows attached to this eccentric and difficult teenager. Taking her under his wing and establishing a relationship complicated by Klára's desperate longing for love, Aladár becomes a mentor and appeases the nightmares and anxieties of the young woman whose parents disappeared during the war. Since the doctor's wife and children died in the death camps which Aladár survived, these two lonely souls support each other. As they grow closer, the joy in both of their lives slowly returns. But as the Soviet Empire rises to power in Hungary, their pure and loving father-daughter relationship is misunderstood and considered undesirable. Barnabás Tóth's second feature premiered at Telluride Film Festival 2019, and screened in the World Cinema section at Busan International Film Festival 2019.

Florian Koerner von Gustorf : 2019
Was gewesen wäre

Astrid is in her late forties and has her life firmly under control. She has fallen in love with Paul, and their first weekend trip together takes them to Budapest for a few romantic days, just the two of them. But in the Hungarian capital things happen differently than they had planned. They run into Julius, Astrid's first great love, whom she had met at an artists' party in East Germany in 1986. It was a love that was never easy, but always exciting. There are still feelings that couldn't really be quashed by the course of history. Together with Paul, Astrid looks back at her past, and suddenly everything could be as it had never been. A fantastic coming-of-age story set in the adult world. Florian Koerner von Gustorf's directorial debut premiered in the New German Cinema section at Filmfest München 2019.

Dorrotya Zurbó : 2018
Könnyű Leckék

Kafia is 17 years old. Two years ago, she fled alone to Europe, to Hungary, in an attempt to escape a forced child marriage in Somalia. She has been living in a state children's home in Budapest ever since. She learns the language, goes to high school, prepares for the Hungarian graduation exam, and starts a modelling career. On the surface, everything seems fine. However, behind a beautiful and confident appearance lies a heavy heart. Kafia's repetitive daily routine revolves around constant dilemmas and self-doubt about leaving behind her Muslim culture and everything else she grew up with. As she allows the camera to get closer to her, the film slowly becomes an intimate confession. What does it mean, on the brink of adulthood, to break with your past and fully give yourself up to a new self in order to live in Europe? Dorrotya Zurbó's second documentary feature premiered at the Semaine de la Critique at Locarno Film Festival 2018, and screened in competition at Sarajevo Film Festival 2018.

Kornél Mundruczó : 2017
Jupiter holdja

A young immigrant is shot down while illegally crossing the border. Terrified and in shock, wounded Aryan can now mysteriously levitate at will. Thrown into a refugee camp, he is smuggled out by Dr Gabor Stern, an errant doctor who has been suspended from his job at the hospital following a fatal accident during a surgical operation. After discovering Aryan's prodigious gift and putting his initial astonishment to one side, this man, who is totally devoid of any faith, decides to use this miracle for lucrative purposes. Pursued by enraged camp director László, the fugitives remain on the move in search of safety and money. Inspired by Aryan's amazing powers, Gabor takes a leap of faith in a world where miracles are trafficked for small change. As the levitations and miracles continue, there is a gradual change in Gabor, who becomes aware of the "Christlike" nature of this "young prince" by his side – who all the while is searching for his father after he disappeared during the border crossing. Kornél Mundruczó's feature premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 2017.

Egil Håskjold Larsen : 2017

Slowly we glide over the remains of life-jackets, torn travel bags and discarded shoes at an unnamed shoreline, establishing the tense political framework of this story. From here we pass on to observe groups of fellow travellers, still continuously moving forward. In the midst of the crowd a three-year-old girl, Lean, catches our attention. She is sitting on the shoulders of her father, with a Frozen backpack on her own back. The father is wearing a hoodie, an Adidas backpack and Nike shoes. This is a family like our own; these people are just like our neighbours. The only, but huge, difference is that they have lost their home and are on their way to a new one – one with their relatives who live in Sweden. There are no interviews or voice-overs; the filmmaker follows the family, which also includes Lean's mother and sister as well as her uncles, as they wait at the Macedonian border, then get into a car driven by a Serbian, walk through Hungarian fields, get on a train in Austria, and then board a bus in Germany. But these locations are not identified with narrative titles – the viewer can determine their geographical position only by means of road signs, railway station instructions or the language spoken in some of the scenes. Carefully we are getting into Lean's journey, and we get to know her outstanding character as she slowly makes her way through Europe with her family. She is strong, never cries and seems to grasp the seriousness of these circumstances. This film tells the story about childhood, family relations, hope and a world that is difficult to understand. Egil Håskjold Larsen's documentary, his first feature, premiered at Copenhagen International Documentary Festival 2017.

69 Minutes of 86 Days – trailer (vimeo)

Árpád Sopsits : 2016
A martfüi rém

Based on real-life events, the story is set in the provincial Hungary of the 1960s, when a series of atrocious murders shock the small town of Martfü. A psychotic killer is on the prowl, strangling young women. Amidst the media frenzy, an innocent man is accused and sentenced for the crimes he could not possibly have committed. A determined detective becomes obsessed with finding the real killer, whilst under pressure from his superiors who just want to see a man hang. Stuck in the suffocating social, political and psychological world of socialist Hungary, they find themselves entangled in a web of intricate conspiracy. The film premiered at Warsaw Film Festival 2016.

Attila Szász : 2015
Demimonde

In January 1914, a horrific murder shakes the city of Budapest to its core. Elza Mágnás, the most high-profile courtesan in the city, has just been strangled and her body thrown into the icy waters of the Danube. Through the eyes of Kató, a young and naïve chambermaid, the film depicts the last four days in Elza's life, her complex relationship with her governess, her patron and her lover. A period mystery drama based on a true story, a tale of love, passion, sex, power and murder. Attila Szász's second feature premiered in competition at Montréal World Film Festival 2015.

Lili Horváth : 2015
A szerdai gyerek

History sometimes repeats itself. As a nine-year-old, Maja was abandoned by her mother and placed in an orphanage. Now it's ten years later and she keeps returning to the institution, now to visit her four-year-old son and hopes that, one day, she will be able to look after him herself. She's familiar with the home – it's where she met Krisz, her boyfriend and the father of her child. He's a young good-for-nothing who doesn't want to be bothered with any of this and would rather have his girlfriend under lock and key. Will she be able to take control of her life despite the unfavourable circumstances? It seems that Maja's self-destructive tendencies are the only obstacle preventing her from doing so. Lili Horváth's feature directorial debut was winner of the East of the West Award and FEDEORA Award when it premiered in competition at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2015.

Bence Fliegauf : 2015
Liliom ösvény

When Rebecca receives news of her mother's death, she is driven to try to seek out her long-lost father and return to the place where she spent her childhood. At the same time, she starts to tell her son, Danny, a series of stories to reveal memories of her dark past. As often happens at that age, Danny's view of the world is magical. He is fascinated by death and birth, as well as what is real and what is imagined. Rebecca's symbiotic relationship with her son means that she, too, is forced to confront these questions. But when they both set off down Lily Lane, they have no idea what is in store for them, and they find themselves in a world of mystical urban awakening, full of wonder and secrets.

György Mór Kárpáti : 2014
Province

Otto works as a conveyor for a food store in Budapest. When his van breaks down during a countryside delivery, he finds himself on an archaeological excavation site. Otto spends one day on the excavation. In this unfamiliar location, he seems to awaken: he is out of his element, but really wants to fit in. He also displays a keen interest in the excavation, or maybe he is just trying to impress the archaeologist he meets on site. A reflection on the random nature of fate, on chance encounters that are destined to remain isolated instances – but will they really stay that way? György Mór Kárpáti's third short premiered in competition in the Cinéfondation selection at Festival de Cannes 2014, and screened in competition at Sarajevo Film Festival 2014.

Virág Zomborácz : 2014
Afterlife

Mózes is a diffident, insecure young man who has finished theology studies and lives with his family in a remote village. His relationship with his authoritative father is rather complicated; the pastor doesn't take his son very seriously and treats him with disdain. One day, the father dies unexpectedly – and his ghost begins appearing to Mózes, the only one in the family who can see him. The young man struggles to figure out how his father's spirit might find peace, and it seems that, for the first time in his life, he's been put in a situation in which he must take things firmly into his own two hands. At the same time, this is an opportunity to transform his relationship to his father. Virág Zomborácz's feature debut inventively handles the topic of mourning and coming to terms with the loss of someone close. Her film premiered in competition in the East of the West section at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2014.

Kornél Mundruczó : 2014
Fehér isten

A cautionary tale between a superior species and its disgraced inferior, tracing the misadventures of a girl and her best friend, a dog, in a world of winners and losers. Favouring pedigree dogs, a new regulation puts a severe tax on mixed breeds. Owners dump their dogs and shelters become overcrowded. 13-year-old Lili fights desperately to protect her pet Hagen, but her father eventually sets the dog free on the streets. Hagen and Lili search desperately for each other, whilst homeless Hagen, struggling to survive, realises that not everyone is a dog's best friend. In a world in which pedigree is a decisive factor, genuine affection can occasionally come out on top and rebel against an unjust fate. The film defends hope for peace and the belief that the eternal war between higher and lower beings will one day be brought to an end. Kornél Mundruczó's sixth feature was winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard when it premiered at Festival de Cannes 2014.

Ricky Rijneke : 2013
A csendesek

Csilla, a young Hungarian woman, wakes up inside a crashed car in the middle of nowhere, not knowing where her younger brother Isti is. He has vanished without a trace. Dazed, upset and alone, and without saying a word, Csilla leaves to begin a second life. She'll never return. She boards a cargo ship heading to Western Europe to keep a promise she made to her brother. When Gábor, a self-proclaimed business man assaults her and takes her last souvenir of Isti, Csilla loses grip on her life completely. As she withdraws into a dream-like world of shadows during her bereavement, the journey turns into a surreal trip on the fragile edge of life and death. Writer and director Ricky Rijneke's film, her first feature, with original soundtrack by composer and sound designer Andrey Dergatchev, premiered in competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013.

Sára Cserhalmi : 2012
Drága besúgott barátaim

Andor Czettl, in his early sixties, visits the declassified Communist archives one day to read the reports filed about him by the secret police. To his surprise he discovers that even his best friend János Pásztor informed against him, for decades. Focusing on the contradictory relationship of the two protagonists rather than the bare act of the problem, the film reflects on those chapters of Hungary's recent past that are still unclear. How can an informer live with himself? How can the one who was reported on cope with this state? Can a close friendship that began decades ago last if such betrayal comes to light? This disturbing psychological drama confronts a sensitive topic from the not-too-distant past that Hungary has yet to give due attention, bravely asking unpleasant questions but avoiding absolute judgements. Sára Cserhalmi's debut feature was winner of the Competition 1-2 Award at Warsaw International Film Festival 2012.

István Szabó : 1980
Confidence

In World War II Hungary, hard-bitten resistance fighter János Biró and naive young mother Katalin are thrown together in an attempt to escape the Nazis. Compelled to pose as husband and wife under false names to hide their connections to the anti-Nazi resistance, they are forced into a strange intimacy. Terrified of discovery, the couple are wary of all those around them, even of each other, and must regard everyone as a potential informant. As their individual loyalties are challenged, their relationship begins to change, calling into question the emotional certainties of their normal lives, and forcing them to reassess who they really trust. This profoundly moving, award-winning film delicately, yet powerfully, explores the nature of our trust and faith in others under exceptional circumstances.

Bence Fliegauf : 2012
Csak a szél

News quickly spreads of the murder of a Romani family in a Hungarian village. The perpetrators have escaped and nobody claims to know who might have committed the crime. For another Romani family living close by, the murder only serves to confirm their latent, carefully repressed fears. Far away in Canada the head of the family decides that his wife, children and their grandfather must join him as soon as possible. Living in fear of the racist terror that surrounds them and feeling abandoned by the silent majority, the family tries to get through the day after the attack. By nightfall when darkness descends on the village the family pushes the beds closer together than usual. Yet their hope of escaping the madness proves illusory. Winner of the Peace Film Award, the Amnesty International Film Prize and the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear at Berlin International Film Festival 2012.

Tomas Alfredson : 2011

George Smiley, a recently retired MI6 agent, is doing his best to adjust to a life outside the secret service. However, when a disgraced agent reappears with information concerning a mole at the heart of the service, Smiley is drawn back into the murky field of espionage. Tasked with investigating which of his trusted former colleagues has chosen to betray him and their country, Smiley narrows his search to four suspects – all experienced, skilled and successful agents. However, past histories, rivalries and friendships make it far from easy to pinpoint the man who is eating away at the heart of the British establishment. A gripping and tense adaptation of John le Carré's classic spy novel.

Love
a film by Károly Makk

Set in Budapest in 1953, János has been imprisoned on a false charge as a political dissident and sentenced to ten years. His young wife Luca does not even know if he is still alive. She frequently visits his bedridden mother and in an attempt to sustain her in her last few months, tells the elderly woman that her favourite son is in America, pursuing a successful career as a filmmaker. She fabricates letters supposedly from János telling his news and then listens impassively while his mother reads her the details. Luca herself is dismissed from her teaching job because of her and her husband's political beliefs.

During the exchanges between the two women we read the thoughts and memories of the mother, shown in brief flashbacks – photographs, events from her past or her imagined past – repeated sequences of images, details and textures of stunning beauty. As the dying woman's days grow bleaker, Luca struggles to keep her spirits up. She has also to contend with her own desperate loneliness, relying increasingly on the support of the mother's housekeeper, Irén. Finally, János is freed and he travels home almost in dread of what he might find there.

Makk's haunting and atmospheric film from 1971, brilliantly shot by János Tóth, captures exactly the fear and uncertainty of the time and is a treatise on how such times affect fidelity, faith, illusion and love. It explores, unsentimentally, a love composed of fortitude and forbearance, restraint and fear, with the belief that you may meet again, and the acceptance that you may not.

A Torinói ló
a film by Béla Tarr

Inspired by the story of 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche protecting a horse from abuse, the film details the lives of the coachman, his daughter, and the horse. In Turin on 3 January 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of 6 Via Carlo Alberto. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom-cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his prompting, the horse refuses to move and at this the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. As Nietzsche approaches this scene, he suddenly jumps towards the cab and, bursting into tears, throws his arms around the horse's neck. Nietzsche is then taken home where he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan. He spends the remaining ten years of his life silent and demented, under the care of his mother and sisters.

Ohlsdorfer, the carter, and his daughter live out their lives on their farmstead. They subsist on hard work, their only source of income being the horse and cart. The father takes on carting jobs, his daughter takes care of the household. It's a very meagre life and infinitely monotonous. Their repeating gestures and the changes in seasons and times of day dictate the rhythm and routine which is cruelly inflicted on them. Their horse, now old and in very poor condition, is no longer able to carry out its tasks. Pulling the loaded cart becomes more and more difficult. However, it tries to obey the words of command but even the whip can't force it to achieve beyond its strength.

All that the horse wants now is peace and an untroubled death. The dying of the horse shapes the story of the film which is framed by the gale sweeping all before it, whose function is to bring true order to the world, at the same time giving the final tribute of respect to innocence and defencelessness. The film speaks about death, and the deep pain that comes with it, felt by all of us as a universal law.

Announced as Béla Tarr's last film, The Turin Horse made its world premiere in competition at Berlin Film Festival 2011 where it was awarded the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear.