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Having grown up in 1950's Hungary (I left during the '56 Revolution), I remember very clearly the great 6:3 win against England, the first time the English national team had ever lost on their home field. I also recall the political period, though I was a child, with my parents drawing dark curtains while we huddled over the big radio, trying to listen to Radio Free Europe.

This film manages to capture beautifully both the excitement about the Hungarian soccer team and the drabness of the economic and political situation. The story begins in contemporary Hungary when a garbage man is asked by an attractive young woman to clean out a house she inherited from her grandfather. To his amazement, the room is filled with soccer memorabilia, featuring that grand national team of the 50s, starring Puskas, Kocsis, and his (and my) favorite--Hidegkuti. When he finds Hidegkuti's game jersey, he puts it on and literally swoons back in time to the day of the 6:3 match. It is also the day of his birth, and what he knows--the final score of the match--is combined with what he does not know--his birth mother's identity.

The film then stays in the past, in turn hilarious and somber, as Tutti runs from radio to radio to listen and anticipate the historic moments of the game. In the process, he makes friends and enemies, indirectly exposing the meanness and stupidity of the Rakosi communist period, especially its informers. In a touching moment, Tutti proudly begins to sing the Hungarian National Anthem, not realizing that national pride during this period has been forced underground. Without missing a beat, Tutti switches into the Internationale, the unifying song for the proletariat. At times surrealistic and always entertaining, 6:3 is a wonderful trip into the Hungarian past where one would hardly want to visit much less live!

This experimental film, also identified as a documentary, needs all of its 66 minutes as well as the time it takes for the credits to run to establish some coherence. Working backwards from the credits, the audience will understand that this is an Arab + Israeli collaboration, that it is funded by various sources from the University of Michigan, that among the many walls it depicts, the Apartheid Wall is also included, and many other tidbits of information that help clarify the film's point of view. Specifically, it is anti-war, anti-occupation, and ultimately anti-Israel, its imagery carefully connecting all who in the film's view are or have been oppressed, from South Africa to "Palestine." Though independent of the image, the sound strategy works with it, alternating and blending readings and pronouncements in English, Hebrew, and Arabic that generally address the plight of children and the physical destruction wrought by war.

When viewers approach this film (as all but reviewers or students will), only once and from the beginning, they will access the point of view but search in vain for an intellectual argument in defense of that point of view. The visual and aural presentation of filmic material here is not designed to "document" an argument. Moving slowly from image to black to image again, the film does, in fact, submit a dazzling variety of cinematic manipulations for a viewer's consideration: flashes, cut-outs, animation, 3D projections, drawings, and lettering. There are moments when the point of view is manifest, as when the painting or poster of Arafat gazes from the wall or when the word "Palestine" is clearly printed in Roman lettering within many words scrawled in Arabic. Also, the recurring presence of lovely and mysterious folded paper birds is eventually explained by one of the readings. But such moments of appeal to the intellect are occasional. For most of its minutes, the film's appeal is non-verbal and emotional, documenting only how the filmmaker feels, not how or why she believes in the cause. How one feels is unassailable and thus not debatable, but a film that offers no argument is self expression, more "fiction" than "documentary," experimental or not. If categorized as an installation project, it could play continuously in an art gallery or museum, offering often poetic images of walls, both constructed and natural, and in such a space, be very much appreciated for its art and deep convictions.

Calling this playful and hilarious film "Panic" is the first of many entertaining misdirections offered by writer/director Attila Till. Using the conventions of the mystery, the horror, the romance, the domestic drama, and a half dozen other genres, he concocts a consistently amusing film. That one cannot help being drawn into the melodramatic concerns of the characters, no matter how obvious and cartoon-like, is also part of Till's joke. Even as he (and his audience) laughs at the dramatics, he also mocks film-making (and himself) at its ability to manipulate the audience.

The title's obvious reference is to the condition of its main character, the beautiful Agi Gubik, a successful executive who has checked herself into an exclusive therapy spa to cope with her panic attacks. Ordered about by the strident but cheerful therapist (Judit Schell), she suffers through wacky sessions, from Western Siberian Spitting Therapy to American Note Reading Sessions. But her bizarre encounters are more than matched by the insanity outside the spa. Her bored mother (veteran actress Ildiko Bansagi) sets false fire alarms that lead to coffee and cake with the firemen. Her brother is convinced that people are being inhabited by aliens vulnerable only to water. Two gay cops struggle to reconcile their generational differences as they train for the SWAT competition in Orlando. The family friend predicts deaths in the family and shops for used sex toys, while her daughter anxiously tests her baby's breathing with a tissue on a regular basis. In short, people are in a panic, in and out of asylums, but not about international relations, global warming, energy shortages, or financial collapse. Rather, they are paralyzed by fears of the most personal, the most mundane, and the most ordinary concerns as they live soap opera lives.

Till's editing creates the most wonderful and witty juxtapositions, exploiting the alternate narration strategy to its fullest, sometimes cutting not only from scene to scene but also from genre to genre and between fantasy and reality, with scenes just seconds in length complete with their corresponding and appropriate soundtrack and musical background. Rather than confusing, this pace is exhilarating and absolutely coherent. His transitions are equally clever, spinning from a barrel bottom to a mixer, from brick to a painting above a bed, from a tilted photo to a slanted fantasy representing a panic attack. On a practical level, given our financially challenged time, he inserts himself in a cameo, a la Hitchcock, as an MC pitching a product in a mall and suggests a new career for unemployed writers with the role of Alex, who is hired by a man to do the actual breaking up with a girl friend. As the ex-lover explains, in a crisis, one needs a professional to speak for you.

This is a truly droll film, lovingly teasing all of us who have been deceived by the magic of film to live our lives as if they being projected on the silver screen for an audience's approval.