István Szilágyi

The fate of a Hungarian Jewish family throughout the 20th century.

The story of Bendegúz, the teenage boy who never succeeds in anything and about whom everybody's first though is "I wish you had been hanged when you were born!" drops out of school and becomes a cowboy. He works for the Stationmaster whose cows he has to graze by the railway. Despite his goodwill and kindheartedness he always manages to spoil everything he touches. No matter his wit, he gets into humiliating situations and regularly fights with the Ugly Witch (the Stationmaster's mother-in-law). However his good spirit and cheerfulness never leave him.

The unique statue of the ancient fertility goddess Demeter, known as the "Pagan Madonna" is stolen from the museum, located in a small town on Lake Balaton. At the same time seriously wounded a servant of the museum. The abduction of the museum's priceless statues of pure gold is investigated by the then young and inexperienced investigator Kardos and lieutenant "Droplet".

A man's story parallels Hitler's rise. Austrian Klaus Schneider, wounded in World War I, recovers in the care of Dr. Emil Bettleheim. Bettleheim discovers that Schneider possesses powers of empathy and of clairvoyance, such that could aid suicidal patients. After the war, with one friend as his manager and another as his lover, Schneider changes his name to Eric Jan Hanussen and goes to Berlin, as a hypnotist and clairvoyant performing in halls and theaters. He always speaks the truth, which brings him to the attention of powerful Nazis. He predicts their rise (good propaganda for them) and their violence (not so good). He's in pain and at risk. What is Hanussen's future?

At a dusty crossroads in the Soviet Union villagers surrender their possessions - a horse, a samovar, a goat - to the state. The train which takes them away brings to the village a physically and mentally handicapped woman, barely able to speak. She makes herself bracelets of burrs and studies herself in a cracked and cloudy mirror. Befriended by very few, teased and tormented by many she seeks protection at a huge portrait of Stalin.

In pre-WWI Austria-Hungary, a physician struggles with his decision about which woman will he marry.

Some of the most symbolic moments of the 1956 Revolution in Hungary were the tooth-and-nail battles fought by the so-called 'Pest Lads' who dared to defy odds by taking on the panzers of one of the world's superpowers. The story begins on October 23rd, 1956 and ends on November 4th of the same year. Juli is Totya's girlfriend but also loves Gábor. Their love triangle will have to endure the trials and tribulations of these stirring times. A group of boys living in the outskirts of the capital are playing football in abandoned lot when Juli, a ticket inspector, brings news of protests breaking out in the city. Only Gábor accompanies her into town and together they become part of this historical event. At dawn, when the boys too come under fire from Soviet forces, they decide to join in the fight.

Based on a true story, a love affair develops between a half brother and half-sister. When pregnancy results and word gets out the public is outraged.

An oil driller falls for the lonely farm wife of a man working in Budapest.

A brothel in a small Hungarian town becomes the home of a medical student after his favorite working girls find out he's out of rent money. Trouble brews as they learn his mother is coming for a visit and they must transform the house.

Near-broke and desperate, Hungarian entrepreneur Feri decides to put a sleazy spin on tourism. After leasing a Lake Balaton boarding house, he moves in his gang -- wife, nephew, daughter, and the daughter's boyfriend -- and then sets out to scam unsuspecting German tourists.

A biography of the eighteenth century Viennese physician, Franz Anton Mesmer, who used unorthodox healing practices based on his theory of "animal magnetism."

Miklós, a professional hunter, is teased by his friends and local fishermen. The cunning otter Lutra keeps slipping out of his hands. One morning he vows not to marry until he finally gets the giant water mammal in front of his rifle.

This satire on film depicts the micro-climate of a technical vocational school newly established at a housing estate. The construction vocational school holds a name-giving ceremony, thus calling the attention of its supervisory organ to itself. The school-master distributes as well as receives presents from the sponsoring factory, and the pupils sit for a written examination of unheard-of material. The results are devastating, which the despotic school-master attempts to conceal by a staged disciplinary procedure.

The famous Swedish Karoliner army has suffered its biggest defeat ever at Poltava in 1709. The Swedish king Karl XII is waiting in the small village of Bender for the Turkish sulton to help him defeat his arch enemy, the czar of Russia, Peter the Great. But the Turks think he's an expensive guest and want him out of Turkey. However, he refuses. The sultan then decides to send Karl XII a princess to marry him, to get him out of the country (a bride for a bribe). The two Swedish soldiers Lagercrona and Kruus are to escort the princess. They experience many different adventures on their way to Bender, namely because other Swedish soldiers and agents try to stop them from ever reaching the village, because they don't want Karl XII to leave Turkey. After their long adventure to get there and a few misunderstandings, the famous "kalabalik" of Bender, where the Turks decide to drive Karl XII out of Turkey by force, begins.

The loving couple of this grotesque parable parody of the Kádár-regime, Mária and István row to an uninhabited, idyllic island. Soon crazy tent-pitchers swarm to the island, led by an official representative of the regime.

The Three Musketeers in Africa is a novel written by a Hungarian novelist Jenő Rejtő with the penname P. Howard. It tells the story of Csülök, Senki Alfonz (Alfonz Nobody) and Tuskó Hopkins, the three legionaries . They have to deliver an important letter to Marquis De Surenne and protect a young lady called Yvonne Barre through the desert and lead her to a safe place. Although these three men are outlaws , they try to do everything to help people who are in need. This is a very exciting book with the unique humor of Jenő Rejtő.

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 when she and her husband take in an old woman and care for her, but the woman dies. Shortly after her son visits, she is killed in an accident which may have been a suicide. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Dire deeds during a winter storm leave Brother Oswin beaten near to death, Sister Hilaria dead, and a pair of young siblings lost in the woods fleeing Lord Stephen's men.

The story is set in the stifling atmosphere of the 1950s. The highly politicized everyday life of the period unfolds from the perspective of a young man coming from a poor peasant background who wins entry to the humanities faculty in Budapest. The film shows how politics interferes in and corrodes the private lives of people.

Transylvania during the reign of the great prince Mihály Apafi I. The Turk asks Prince Apafi for another tribute, and the Prince sends him two hundred gold pieces with Kristoff Szitáry. His two sons accompanied him halfway. On the way, they stop at the house of the caliph Pisliczar and spend the night there, and in the morning only Kristóf Szitáry continues his journey to Oradea. The Pasha is happy to receive him, but as soon as he opens the bags of money, stones and pieces of horseshoe fall out.

If there has ever been pure and undestroyable love, this is it. That is how Imre and Vera feel. The talented chemist loses his best friend for the girl's sake, then gives up his profession, only to be able to stay in the capital with Vera. But the young actress at the beginning of her career is neglected. Imre accepts an uninteresting, but well-paying position. They seem to be happy together.

The changing and turbulent history of Hungary is seen through the eyes of three men over a 30-year period in this somber drama. The three recall the highlights of their lives in flashbacks as they reminisce in the mid 1960s. The venerable trio begin their story in the 1930s, through World War II, and the decade beyond the communist invasion of 1956.

In the streets of Vichy, France, during World War II, the Germans apprehend nine men and a boy. Among them are a painter, a businessman, an electrician, a waiter, an army doctor, an actor, a prince, a gypsy, and a Jew. Confined without explanation, they can only speculate about their fate.

Angi Vera is a young nursing assistant in a hospital. When she speaks out against the appalling conditions, she is reprimanded, but the Communist Party takes her under its wing. She is sent for ideological training, where she learns to be an agitator in exchange for accommodation and meals. Meanwhile, she falls in love with one of her teachers, but she cannot live out her love within the walls of the strict school.

Documentary with animated sequences about that massive Hungarian exodus to the US which went on from the end of 19th century till the outbreak of WW1. The history of the nameless crowds presented in the film submerged under the surface of official history.

Members of the Wild Goose patrol decide to find the little monkeys stolen from the Zoo. They try to make up for what the unruly adults messed up. They keep bumping into the disguised damned ice-cream vendor, the intriguing Bagaméri, who would like to get the reward set for the finder of the monkeys.

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!"

Patrik and Félix are the heart and soul of a group of five young friends from Debrecen, who have been good friends since childhood. Félix works as a tester for a software development company, while Patrik lives his daily life by working odd jobs. But their peaceful, if not easy, lives take a radical turn when Félix, who is struggling financially, is fired from his job and Patrik inherits a huge debt from his grandfather, along with a handkerchief-sized, worthless estate in Dobogokó.

A group of landless Hungarian peasants accept work as migrant-labourers on a northern German farm where the wages are good, and the wives and family are allowed to accompany them. Though in the midst of WWII, they are relatively well-off. However, as they witness the treatment accorded to POWs and others not so gently regarded, and at the conclusion of the year's harvest, they choose to return to Hungary and are quickly swept up in the tides of war.

In modern Hungary, con artist Bender Oszkár and his motley crew - Barangó and a band of small-time schemers - embark on a series of outrageous scams to track down an “illegal” millionaire and seize ten million for themselves. As they exploit every trick in the book - fake charities, crooked roulette tables, forged documents - their madcap pursuit of easy riches exposes the absurdities and corruptions of contemporary life, with Bender’s fate hanging on whether his “great maneuver” will pay off or blow up in his face.

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In the small village of Rátót, every male is called Béla. When a woman gives birth to her child, she names him Józsi...

By the notes of Fiáth Pompeiusz, the one-time friend of Kapa and Pepe, Professor Szirtes has solved the secret of the time machine, and he realizes the invention relying on "special" H2O. Kapa and Pepe shall return by it into the past in order to set time right, which is out of joint, that is, to correct history, to save King Louis II, and prevent the Mohács Disaster. Pepe yields to the not too tender persuasion to enter upon the great journey through time, dies and revives, and they arrive at the battlefield of Mohács in time. Kapa films the events. The Turks win and cut off the king’s, Pepe’s, head, still the Hungarians dictate the peace treaty. Kapa and Pepe want to return, they fill the time machine up with water from the well, yet it won’t start. Even so Kapa and Pepe hover over Budapest and quarrel.

The Three Tailors' Men is a fairy tale that uses parables and fairy-tale elements to teach children the eternal values of truth and lies. The protagonists are three tailors who are given strange needles, thread and canvas: the person who wears the clothes they have sewn can only tell the truth; lies are far from him.

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 from the trouble spot as possible, knowing that most soldiers would be loyal to Budapest rather than Vienna.

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Mrs. Fazekas and her three sons live in a tenement house in the outskirts. The eldest son, Fecó, is saving money in order to buy a washing machine for his mother, while her other two sons spend time by hanging around and playing tricks.

No description available.

Feature film version of the 1971 series. On the eve of the 18th century, County Vicecomes Görgey Pál broods alone in his manor while the town of Leutschau celebrates New Year’s with lead‐casting omens and a disastrous hunt that sparks a bitter feud. As Görgey fights for his honor and life, and the townspeople defend their Saxon privileges, their mutual blind ambition prevents them from seeing the rising light of Rákóczi’s coming rebellion.

While cleaning offices at night, Zsolt Kovàcs learns a lot about his invisible employers by examining what they leave behind, carefully choosing his targets, often disillusioned women whom he seduces, methodically taking their money. An artist of manipulation, with a generous dose of humor and the ability to assume different personalities, Zsolt begins to work in a psychologist's practice, where he meets Hanna, a 30-year-old dancer who is physically incapacitated and the daughter of a millionaire. The ideal victim if love doesn't get in the way.

The protagonist was sent to South America after the war. Now he is back home and wants to meet his old love. At the same time, he takes on the job of looking after his in-laws' children, two very bad boys, while their parents are on holiday abroad. What will become of it? Anyone who meets the "fantastic aunt" at the beginning of the film, as well as Huba and Csaba, will have an inkling.

The story is about a woman who is waiting for the return from the war of her front-line soldier husband. Ilonka and her two children return from the village to their apartment in Budapest. Her husband is held captive by the Americans and awaits the first opportunity to return home, but he does not yet know that his fellow soldiers suspect him of complicity in crimes. In the meantime, Ilonka takes a job in a factory to make a living...

Tamás, a jaded ad executive, is taken hostage during a gas‐station robbery where both fellow captives and criminals are so unhinged that you never know who holds the gun or when it might fire. No one in this motley crew is who they claim to be, as World Cup commentary blares in the background, a mysterious shipping container surfaces; by the end, even the U.S. president makes an appearance.