Sándor Szakácsi

Barbara is a forty-year-old woman of Polish origin living in Budapest. She is a biologist, a wife and a mother. The death of her woman friend opens her eyes to the fact that she is lonely, unable to find her place.

The man is promoted and given a new assignment at his work-place. At home, he stares at a video-cassette: it portrays his wife's face in countless versions, she is sometimes simply beautiful, then unfathomable, but it is mostly a sad, closed, lonely face.

Documentary screenplay, based on letters and writings of the composer Béla Bartók. Musical works composed throughout his life are placed in context alongside the composer's writings from the time. Extracts from all his main works from 1900 to 1945 are included.

Adapted for Hungarian TV.

Via the New York Times: "The Hungarian director Gyula Gazdag has transposed the middle section of Balzac's "Lost Illusions" from Paris in the mid-19th century to the Budapest of 1968... it tells of Laszlo Sardi - Balzac's Lucien Chardon - and his efforts to launch his literary career amid the snobbery and sophistication of a big city."

The Christmas of 1944. The Pásztor family (father, mother, four daughters and a grandchild), are spending the holidays at their country farm. Péter, mothers apple of the eye, soon arrives, and has no objections when his soldiers uniform is made to disappear during the night. The Soviet army, arriving in the footsteps of the fleeing Hungarian army, is commandeering. At night, the soldiers turn up at the house where young women are abiding.

A country theatre wants to stage the historical play of the opposition author, who is famous abroad but it is well known, that he is fatally ill. The ministry unexpectedly bans the premier. The author is not informed about the decision and he wants - before his death - the costume rehearsal of the play. The director and his actors set up a false rehearsal at the price of a long night's tedious job.

Hungary's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1984

L'histoire de la famille Sonnenschein à travers le destin de trois générations, de l'empire des Habsbourg jusqu'au lendemain de la révolution hongroise de 1956. Avec sa formule de liqueur médicinale, Emmanuel Sonnenschein a bati la fortune de la famille et déjoué, pour un temps seulement, l'antisémitisme prononcé de la sociéte hongroise. Mais son fils Adam, malgré une médaille d'or aux Jeux olympiques de 1936, ne pourra échapper a l'holocauste. C'est en partie pour le venger que son fils Ivan a choisi de faire carrière dans la politique.

Hungarian-born Laszlo Szabo returned to his native country to play the part of Dibusz in this comedy. When the residents of a large old house learn that it is to be torn down and that they will be relocated elsewhere, an intense game gets underway. As is usual in such instances, the residents will be given new apartments commensurate in size with their old ones. Dibusz sees this as an opportunity to temporarily enlarge his "assigned" space in the condemned building. He wants to be reassigned to an apartment which is larger than his current bathless one-room space. He and a neighbor cooperate to break down the walls that separate their spaces from that of an old woman who just died after a brief tussle. Still not satisfied, he tries to marry one of two spinster women who live together but is rejected. In the course of the film, he has intense encounters of one sort or another with anyone who might be of help to him in his quest.

1991, farewell in Budapest. Mária remembers the past in tears. Her husband, Tibor, a chemist and a target of the KGB, left their apartment one evening to fetch some cigarettes only to be found drowned in the shallow Lake Balaton the following day. Their son, Peter, a student in Western-Europe, was found dead on the Danube embankment.

István, a király ("Stephen, the King") is a Hungarian rock opera written by Levente Szörényi (music) and János Bródy (lyrics), based on the life of Saint Stephen of Hungary. The storyline was based on the play Ezredforduló (Turn of the Millennium) by Miklós Boldizsár, who co-wrote the libretto. The opera was first staged in 1983 on an open-air stage in Budapest. This first performance was also made into a 1984 film, directed by Gábor Koltay, and its music released on an album. The musical became a smash hit and is still very popular in Hungary and among Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries.

1958. In the cell of the condemned, seven men await the signs of an approaching execution. All of them recall their pasts and envision their wish-dreams.

The lifelong friendship of Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich.