Béla Tarr

A young doctor undergoes a spiritual crisis when he returns to his rural home.

This story takes place in a small town on the Hungarian Plain. In a provincial town, which is surrounded with nothing else but frost. It is bitterly cold weather - without snow. Even in this bewildered cold hundreds of people are standing around the circus trailer, which is put up in the main square, to see - as the outcome of their wait - the chief attraction, the stuffed carcass of a real whale. The people are coming from everywhere. From the neighboring settlings, even from quite far away parts of the country. They are following this clumsy monster as a dumb, faceless, rag-wearing crowd. This strange state of affairs - the appearance of the foreigners, the extreme frost - disturbs the order of the small town. Aambitious personages of the story feel they can take advantage of this situation. The tension growing to the unbearable is brought to explosion by the figure of the Prince, who is pretending facelessness. Even his mere appearance is enough to break loose destructive emotions...

A lonely obese nurse, working at a hospital terminal ward, is reminded of her childhood friend Adrienn Pal and wants to track her down.

Luca regularly visits her bedridden mother-in-law. Luca's husband, János, has been arrested on a trumped up political charge, and Luca does not know if he is still alive. Luca hides this from his mother by making up letters purporting to be from János who is directing a big film in New York. Luca discovers that János is alive, and is dismissed from her teaching job because of her husband. The dying mother anxiously awaits the return of her son from New York.

A large, claustrophobic apartment is the setting for this intense chamber drama. In this dense setting, the inhabitants of the apartment reveal their darkest secrets, fears, obsessions and hostilities.

A husband and wife, drifting apart, reflect on the events leading up to the worst argument of their marriage.

Portrait of a young unstable man, unable to find happiness with a woman. Once a factory worker and nurse. Plays the violin, get kicked out of music school. Becomes a disc jockey.

One night Maloin, a switchman at a seaside railway station situated by a ferry harbor, witnesses a terrible event. He is just watching the arrival of the last ferry at night from his control room on top of a high iron traverse from where he can see the whole bay. Suddenly he notices that the first of the disembarking passengers, a tall thin figure (a certain Brown as it will turn out later) leaves the harbor, but not on the usual route: after getting through customs, he goes around the dock and then withdraws into a dark corner, waiting. Opposite him, in front of the ship, another man soon appears and throws a suitcase towards the man on the shore. He goes and picks it up, then waits in an dark corner for the other man to join him. When he arrives, however, they begin to quarrel and finally, in the course of the vehement fight, due to a hit that turns out to be fatal, the shorter one falls in the water and sinks, clutching the suitcase in his hand. Maloin is watching the scene, astonished. In a state of fear and shock, he opens the door of his control room, but the sharp and loud creaking sound disturbs and frightens away the murderer. Brown is forced to flee before being able to fish out the suitcase from the water. After the murderer disappears down one of the streets behind the harbor, Maloin cautiously climbs down from his cabin to the shore. When he realizes that there is nothing he can do for the victim, he dredges up the suitcase. He takes it up to his control room and opens it: it is packed with money. He is dazzled. He does not go either to call the police or fetch the murderer; he just stares at the pile of money. He simply cannot believe his eyes. Then, after meticulously drying and counting the banknotes, he hides the suitcase in his closet and locks it. At dawn, when his colleague arrives, he acts as if nothing had happened. He returns home on his usual route. Nevertheless, this path is not the same anymore;

It has been fifteen years since the death of her father, Agamemnon, and Elektra still burns with hatred for Aegisztosz, who conspired with Elektra's mother to kill him.

The breakdown of the relationship of a couple by living in a flat of the husband's parents.

Mail author for translation. A riporter csak húsz órát tölt a faluban. Beszélgetései so- rán kibontakozik húsz év története. Megismerkedik "elnök Jóska" életútjával, akit gyermekkori barátság kötött Balogh Antihoz. Az átalakulás buktatókkal terhes évei mégis úgy hoz- ták, hogy 1956-ban fegyvert fogott rá a régi barát. Másik 56-os tragédia is feltárul a riporter elõtt: akkor lõtte le cimborá- ját, Kocsis Bénit a párttitkár, Varga Sándor. A küzdelmes é- veket megélt Jóska már nincs egyedül. A szövetkezet vezetõ- sége ugyan még nehezen szánja rá magát a döntésekre, nagy az ellenállás az újjal a korszerûbbel szemben, de a múlt már nem ismétlõdhet meg.

Against the backdrop of post-WWII Hungary, the young orphaned boy, Takó, needs to create a loving fabrication for his long-lost father who died prematurely in Nazi-occupied Budapest. Having only faint and disappointingly few memories of his parent and hero--while still struggling to distinguish reality from fantasy--a grown-up Takó embarks on a journey of truth and enlightenment, as he attempts to unearth the identity of the beloved deceased he barely knew. Now, little by little, childhood's wide-eyed innocence gives way to the inescapable certainty. In the end, who was the man Takó called dad?

A band of runaways and orphans of the war scour the countryside in search of food and shelter. They invade and then taken in by a musician and former concert pianist who's hiding out in a ruined castle. After the initial altercation between them the gang accepts his guidance and he wins their respect by protecting them from the elements. However, disgruntled townsfolk want to chase away the gang who has been - in their search for survival - laying waste to their crops. A battle ensues ending in the death of a little boy - and resolution.

In this powerful short film, the renowned William Shakespeare play is stripped down to the bare essentials, consisting of two lengthy shots.

Mail author for translation. Kodos hegycsucsok, fekete fenyvesek vilagaban el a havasok nehezsorsu nepe. Csutak Gergely favago nyomorusagos eletet felesege irant erzett nagy szerelme es kisfiuk szuletese szepiti meg. "Magyarorszag megmutatta az utat. Ha az oreg filmrendezoknek, es mar kivenhedt film-osszeeszkabaloknak nincs mas mondanivalojuk, ha az a fajta filmgyartas, amit ok kepviseltek, kifaradt, ha a rendezoi tudomanyuk nehezkes es hazug, tehat korszerutlen, rajta, dolgozzunk nelkuluk!... Hatoljon be mar vegre a mi mutermeinkbe is a havasok dala, az a dal, amelyet Szots Istvan zenditett meg eloszor, s kergesse el a kivenhedt filmelokelosegeket, kalmarokat, es kufarokat a velencei fesztivalokrol is. Hiszunk a fiatalokban, akik igenis meg fogjak vivni, es meg fogjak nyerni a maguk csatajat a filmmuveszetben is." Ezeket az euforikus sorokat Carlo Lizzani 1942-ben irta a filmrol, mely itthon, s kulfol- don egyarant nagy hatast gyakorolt a filmkeszitokre, s a velencei fesztivalon dijat is kapott

Miklós Jancsó's Silence and Cry is set during a turbulent era of disquiet, fear, persecution and terror, which permeates every corner of post-WWI Hungarian society. In 1919, after just a few months of communist rule the Hungarian Republic of Councils falls victim to a nationalist counter-revolution. Admiral Horthy, leader of the nationalist far right movement, becomes the self-proclaimed regent of Hungary, and assumes power as the legal Head of State. Soldiers of the short-lived Hungarian Red Army are now on the run from relentless secret policemen and patrol units of the nationalist Royal Gendarme. If caught, ex-Red Army soldiers are executed without mercy or proper trial. István Cserzi, a former soldier of the Red Army has fled to the Great Hungarian Plains and has taken refuge on a farm, which is run by two sympathetic women. Due to the generosity of these women and a former childhood pal, who is now a commandant of the local Royal Gendarme outfit, István is safely hidden from the ever-prying eyes of the secret policemen, who relentlessly roam the countryside searching for ex-Red Army men and their sympathisers. However, upon discovering that the women are secretly poisoning the mother-in-law and the husband, the legal owners of the farm, István must make the most difficult decision of his life. As a personal war is waging within his own consciousness over morality and self-preservation, István must decide whether to remain silent about the women's devious secret and preserve his own life, or to report their heinous crime to the Royal Gendarme, which would also mean certain death for him.

In a small, dilapidated village in 1990s Hungary, life has come to a virtual stand-still. The autumn rains have started. A few of the villagers expect to receive a large cash payment that evening, and then plan to leave. Some want to abscond earlier with more than their fair share of the money. However, they hear that the smooth-talking Irimias, who they thought had died, is returning. They are apprehensive that he will take all their money in one of his grandiose schemes to keep the community going.

Single factory worker Kata, 43, wants to have a child with her long-time secret lover, a married man called Joska. He doesn't like the idea. Kata befriends teenage schoolgirl Anna, abandoned by her parents at the age of six. Anna runs away from the local children's home and moves in with Kata so that she can keep on seeing her boyfriend Sanyi. Kata goes to see Anna's parents and persuades them to give the young lovers their permission to marry. Through Anna, Kata becomes interested in neglected children and decides to adopt a baby from the children's home.