
Pál Sándor
Directing
Biography
Pál Sándor (born 19 October 1939) is a Hungarian film director, producer, and screenwriter. He has directed 28 films since 1964. His 1976 film A Strange Role was entered into the 27th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear.
Known For

The life and career of the brutal Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin. Through the eyes and memories of Anna Aliluyeva, Stalin’s granddaughter, the film traces the rise of the Bolshevik tyrant from Lenin’s return from exile to his brutal struggle with Trotsky, the creation of his feared secret police and the merciless inner workings of his regime. As Anna recounts her grandfather’s life, viewers gain an intimate, personal perspective on the paranoia and purges that left even his closest circles living in constant fear.
Stalin

The story of five secretive characters, told with Klezmer music. Five 21st century young and not so young men someplace in the world. They are musicians in search for someone and something which might have been born in their imagination. Once upon a time in the beginning of the 20th century there lived a Klezmer musician and storyteller Prince Nazaroff. Many people don’t believe he ever existed, but these five do. They have imagined him, and imagination can be stronger than reality. To this day, Nazaroff lives in them. They can’t except that something could disappear forever. They call themselves ‘The Brothers Nazaroff’. A deeply emotional story told through Klezmer music about identity, emigration, inner emigration, brothers and godbrothers, religion and belief, faith and disbelief. A modern story about our strange world we live in.
Soul Exodus

Four good old friends - all railwaymen until the change of regime - will be the victims of the cutbacks. Many years later, when the old station has been removed by thieves, the former stationmaster of Honos village, Lajos Zsuzsa, receives a notice from the town to go to the station office. Lajos Zsuzsa, in order to get the four friends occasionally back to work, lies that the station still exists and that they are able to carry out their duties.
Hasutasok

An atmospheric, sub-hallucinogenic venture into the world of the unknown. The enigma facing a young woman is the identity of her father. Unfortunately for her, she becomes drawn into a small Romanian underworld of brooding menace, darkness, torture chambers, and vampires.
Daughter of Darkness

In 1974, mountain climber Molly Higgins (Lori Singer) begins her ascent of Lenin Peak, located in the Pamir Mountains on the edge of the Himalayas. She's part of an international climbing expedition that has brought a team of U.S. climbers into the USSR. But completing their mission won't be easy, as Mother Nature and internal divisions hamper their journey up the perilous peak, putting all their lives in jeopardy. This made-for-TV movie is based on a true story.
Storm and Sorrow

Story of the owners (Mastroianni and Schygulla) of a fancy nightclub in Budapest before and during WWII.
Miss Arizona

Emilia Odor is a young, seventeen year old girl. She end up in a rural girl institute, which has strict rules, a hypocrite faculty and she soon starts to rebel against it. Her schoolmates support her until then the manager announce a competition among the students: the most deserving student will participant in the millenial festival in Budapest.
Love, Emilia

In Budapest’s Sixth District stands the “Noah’s Ark”, a “dirty-beautiful” tenement housing thirteen flats filled with a rapper, a poet, a washed-up footballer, an unfaithful wife, three aspiring actresses, retired cinema director Stock Ede and his home-bound octogenarian friend Aurél Tálas. When Ede, long disgusted by TV game shows, shocks everyone by entering “Hungary’s Best Grandpa” contest for a 5 million-forint prize, the building erupts in excitement.
Noah's Ark

Péter tries to make a film on "Swan-Lake". At the weekend, shooting stops and the staff goes home. Péter leaves for home with his wife, Judit, but as he catches sight of a girl at the station, he cannot resist the temptation and gets off the train.
Just a Movie

Olivér and Ficskó are fierce restaurant critics crusading for culinary excellence and mercilessly skewering inept chefs under the pseudonym “the Lumnitzer Sisters.” Offended restaurateurs hire resourceful young manager Milica to unmask, neutralize or recruit the critics - by bribery, seduction or, failing that, elimination. A battle of wits unfolds as Milica’s schemes clash with the critics’ razor-sharp reviews.
De kik azok a Lumnitzer nővérek?

A cardiologist is sent into retirement, but he feels at loss without his work. He returns to his home village to work as a general practitioner. This is the start of his ordeal: he's confronted with raw reality, which finally brings him to his knees. But music has the last word.
Final Report

After a young soldier sides with a troupe of travelling actors in a fist fight that erupted while they are performing a play, he is forced to flee and the troupe decides to take him in.
The Troupe

After the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young Hungarian, wanted by the police for political crimes, escapes to just this side of the Austrian border. When he discovers that his escape contact has been shot, he disguises himself as a woman and, posing as a maid, takes refuge at a tuberculosis sanatorium. He lives there as a woman for the entire winter before resuming his journey in the spring.
A Strange Role

Three thirtysomething chemical scientists, Laci, Gyuri and Kati celebrate the success of their development program before New Year's Eve with drinking for several days. But the morning of New Year's Eve does not bring the expected recognition, because the nice, bald, old director is replaced by a young, bald, but disagreeable one. In a sodden atmosphere it becomes clear that everybody has an axe to grind in the informative discussions.
A Happy New Year!

"Ripacsok" is a great movie with great soundtrack, acting, cinematography, direction, etc. The world of "artists", hamming actors, good clowns and bad clowns... A unique movie in many ways. Pál Sándor is a very good hungarian director, watch his movies (especially the slightly better "Régi idõk focija") if you have the chance.
Salamon & Stock Show

Torday Géza, a new engineer arrives at the ammunition factory disguised as if manufacturing camping gears. His appearance upsets existing patterns. The director sells the products at a low price in the West. In the meantime diversionaries attempt to destroy the plant. It turns out that Torday is a man of the intelligence built in among the reconnaissance people, as is his childhood lover, Magda. Agents and policemen play the game.
Light behind the Shutter

No description available.
Irodalom

Reconstructions of unrealized Hungarian films in cooperation with the greatest Hungarian film directors.
Negative history of Hungarian cinema

In December 1956 there is a chaotic situation in Hungary. The revolution is put down by the Soviet army. People leave the country in large numbers for fear of revenge. A young soldier (György Angeli) who also took a part in the revolution, takes a train to Vienna together with his friend (Dániel Szerencsés). Written by Tamas Patrovics
Daniel Takes a Train

Lili's brother is released from prison, and she tries to get him out of the country as quickly as possible so that he can start a new life. The film tries to portray the helplessness and helplessness of the young people of the 80s who don't know what to do with themselves.