Lajos Őze

The seeming hopelessness of combatting an all-powerful government that will not tolerate political dissension is the focus of this excellent historical drama set in the mid-19th century in Hungary. In the opening scenes, Hungary has just lost its bid for independence from Austria and a Magyar officer, unable to bear the tragedy of defeat and what it means, says an affectionate good-bye to his beloved horse and then shoots the animal and himself. Two years later, Ferenc (Gyorgy Cserhalmi) is trying to eke out a living for his wife and her family -- and at the same time avoid any hint of sympathy for Hungarian independence because the Secret Police are everywhere. Just as life seems to be going well, Ferenc's former commanding officer (Lajos Oze) arrives and begins discussing revolution again -- a futile pursuit at this point in time. The next day, Ferenc is thrown into an insane asylum and everyone else is arrested as well.

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Three generations live side by side. The wilful, jack-in-all-pots grandmother blackmails the family with fake faintings, while grandpa suffers from cerebral sclerosis. Mother manages a fashionable hotel, she needs to look smart and unyielding, even when their weird uncle drives into the restaurant drunk. Father is an introverted, solitary teacher, who from time to time turns the home inside out in pursuit of his hobby, i.e. topography, and his mental balance. Suddenly unexpected things come to light about their teen-age daughter, Juli.

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The Hungarian Oh, Bloody Life reflects on the heavy emotional toll taken by the repressive Stalin regime. Dorotya Udvaros plays a young actress from a high-born family. The government bias against persons of wealth threatens to destroy her career before it begins. As a final blow, she is threatened with deportation. The exasperation inherent in the film's title is only the tip of the iceberg.

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A Budapest high school in the beginning of the 1960s. Dini suffers the torments of adolescence. His father had to leave Hungary after the uprise in 1956, and since then Dini's mother has had to take care of her two sons on her own. A friend of Dini’s father, Bodor, is released from prison and moves in with them. Dini and his brother are far from happy about this intrusion on their family life.

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In 1947 Hungary, Dorottya is expelled from school for possessing Communist literature and joins a party cell to remain near her lover, only to fall for and marry the group’s leader. After the Communist takeover, her husband vanishes in a political purge, leaving her to suspect her former lover played a role in his disappearance. Now a disillusioned factory cleaner, she is forced to confront her past and face a bleak future alone under the rising Stalinist regime.

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Lt. Kojak arrives in Budapest as a guest speaker for the 'International Crime Writers Conference'. Soon after he starts enjoying the pleasures that the city has to offer, he assists his old friends at the police department with a case. The case involves solving the murder of a noted scientist, unaware that a Mafia hit man and his female companion are targeting him.

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The film is a true account of the drama of "non-action" on 14th and 15th of October, 1944. The Nazis, having a straightforward program, occupy Hungary with little or no difficulty, as the Hungarian political leadership had no unambiguous program for responding to possible steps of the Nazis. In spite of the secretly signed cease-fire agreement and proclamation, Horty gives up all plans of resistance at the news of the kidnapping of his son. The Nazis take over power and roll up the so-called conspiracy aimed at Hungary's breaking away from the German alliance.

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Hungary, 1950s. József Pelikán, who works as a dam keeper on the Danube, meets by chance Zoltán Dániel, an old friend whom he saved from death years before and who is now a powerful politician.

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Hungary in the 1930s. The world suddenly changes around the peaceful office-clerk and regular, average petit-burgeois Kornél Cassius. Friends and relatives turn up in his home, who soon establish themselves there and even take the upper hand. They continue to arrive in increasing numbers, and turn the well-known objects and patterns of relationships upside down.

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This film takes place in Paris and Geneva in the 1530s and 1550s. Kálvin János and Szervét Mihály are school mates in Paris. The university students celebrate the victory of the Reformation with Kálvin's "Institution", written under a pseudonym.

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Just a few days before the foreign delegation arrives at the ZOO, someone scribbled the elephant with unwashable paint.

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After her divorce leaves her feeling depressed and aimless, a disciplined forty-year-old woman named Teréz wanders through Budapest while grappling with a profound sense of isolation. She visits former lovers and estranged acquaintances in a desperate attempt to find a meaningful connection and reclaim the stability she has lost.

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Adapted from István Csurka's play of the same name. Four men often get together in the evenings to play poker, big money is lost, often without any collateral. During heated arguments, it becomes clear during the break between playing cards that these people once had the opportunity to live differently. They were talented, but now they are neither on the right nor the left, and in their own words, they live in nihilism.

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An adult educator arrives in the small-town factory with loads of books, energy and a freshly received diploma. The honest young man with dreamy eyes humanises the life of the plant, in a way distributing himself among people.

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In 1944 Budapest, 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 poses a hypothetical that will change their lives forever.

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One day Novák Erzsébet kindergarten-teacher destroys her papers, cuts her hair and closes her mouth forever. She prepares for suicide namelessly, then somewhere around Normafa she accepts being taken into an asylum.

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Kicsi Dániel, the young virtuoso pianist gets a separate apartment in the ten-storey block of flats. He rehearses all the time, irregularly, day and night, disturbing thus the peace of the dwellers in the thin-walled house. Inquisition begins in the name of equal rights for inhabitants.

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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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Two arts students, András and Viktor who are writing their thesis on detective stories, make up a story and keep nagging the famous film-director, who just came back from Hollywood, until he undertakes the job. At night they work on the film, in which two youths kill a director returning from the US. In the morning the director is found dead - a knife in his back.

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The story of the film with a touch of journalistic atmosphere takes place in the autumn 1919 after the fall of the proletarian dictatorship. The main figure is Zilahy Kálmán, a high-school teacher, very much attracted to Ady's ideology. He is, at the same time, a rational minded sober character keeping a certain distance from the chaotic events. During the first months of the terror of the Whites, he takes a stand for his persecuted colleague, and with his wife's help, he hides Pálos, a Communist commissar in his flat.

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Three people skilfully kidnap the company director, who never takes the responsibility, takes sleeping pills and spends his time feeding ornamental fish. The kidnappers turn out to be no other than the Engineer, the Technician and the Worker, who only wanted to avoid bankruptcy this way.

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Marching through the snowfields of Ukraine, the Writer is already haunted by visions. His famous characters in his novels, Jimmy Fülig, Ivan Gorchev, Sir Yolland, Marshal Podvinecz and others, appear in his visions, blurring reality. The heroes of the novel do not deny themselves here either, and try to counterbalance the terrible reality of everyday life with wry, grotesque humour...

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The heroines of this lyric comedy full of burlesque elements are two girls from a village who get totally engrossed in their day-dreaming. Ida and Rozi escape to the city to catch husbands for themselves.

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The two main characters of this ironic account of the general condition of intellectuals are the charming psychologist, Korin György, and the unexpected. Korin starts a television series of people in their 40s. In the afternoon just after the first section, however, he is reported to be dead as a result of a rather strange accident. Everything turns upside down.

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The grotesque comedy with crime elements takes place in a grocery store.

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This mocking criticism of public life and the media focuses on a TV series. The protagonist of the film, depicting the battles fought for Hungarian castles during the Ottoman occupation, is chosen to be the amateur Prohászka Feri, a worker in the beer-factory.

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The 16th century Kecskemét troubled by both the Kurutses and the Labancs would like a Bey from the Buda pasha to defend them in exchange for four beautiful girls, but only gets a caftan. It was a good deal, however. All Muslims fall on their knees when they see the magic caftan and fulfil its owner's wish.

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An aspiring film student is denied a scholarship to the state-funded university when his father is thrown in jail. The man had stopped a train in order to facilitate the union between two old friends. The son then takes a job as a land surveyor and meets a Greek man who works towards the collective benefits of the peasants. The man is killed in a peasant uprising prompted by a bureaucratic boondoggle. The surveyor looks after the man's widow as his emerging political and social awareness leads him take a stand against government injustice. Another incident, in which gypsies are rounded up by state hygiene workers, further galvanizes the man's beliefs. He photographs the incident, and his work allows him to be accepted into the school from which he was previously denied admission.

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