Acting
Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals, who include a doctor and three couples, await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. Irimias, a villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.
A naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.
It is 1680 – the time of dreamt snow after the Turkish invasion. In the deserted plains of Bácska a living soul cannot be found in a few-days’ walk. Three former prisoners returning from their Turkish captivity – Long-Legged, Lame and One-Eyed – appear among the crumbling walls of a huge abandoned church without a roof. They are looking for their long lost home. How to revive a disappeared civilization? What is the survivors’ personal duty? Without a roof, a collapse is inevitable. The Old Man – a master of ancient knowledge – and his daughter come and with sharing sowing seeds they try to save the community of dispersion. No spiritual leader, no aims. Driven by rapacity, One-Eyed kills the Old Man, rapes his daughter and while looking for the remaining seeds he kills Long-Legged with a sudden anger. At the end of the film, the survivors need to face with dramatic encounters and special temptations. Their redemption under the leadership of Lame’s young son is the pledge for the future.
Daniel’s drab existence as a physics teacher takes an adventurous turn when he falls in love with a Turkish girl named Melek. He spontaneously decides to follow her to Instanbul by car. On the road across Europe, he picks up his free-spirited friend Juli, who is secretly in love with him.
Set in a mining town, it records the development of two shy people falling in love but finding it difficult to express their true feelings. Tamas a young coal miner has an eye for the girls but is too bashful to ask for a date. Juli is a teacher in charge of a kindergarten. She too has yearnings for love but fears showing the feelings bubbling within her. The quiet and tender moments the lovers spend together are contrasted with the overpowering gigantic and noisy coal mine with its dirty metal trucks and endless rubber conveyor belts. There is an atmosphere of impending danger within the mine.
Anita and her married boyfriend, András, get involved with some heavy hitters who smuggle from Ukraine into Hungary. The deeper into it they get, the more their relationship is strained; things aren't helped by the unexpected visit that András's pregnant wife pays Anita and her mother. At a nightclub, Anita meets Alex, a Ruthenian who's a collector of folk songs. The two of them begin an affair, and András may be left out in the cold, with the local mob still waiting for him to deliver the goods. How patient will they be, how desperate will András get, and how will Anita sort out loyalty and infatuation?
Imre Horváth and his friends gather to celebrate his wife's birthday. They are confused because of the changes in the country's politics and want Horváth to be much more active politically, but he is more concerned about his affair with his best friend's daughter.
The tumultuous history of Hungary through the twentieth century is viewed through the saga of the Hungarian-Jewish, furniture-manufacturing family, the Vendels. After taking over the once successful, but now failing, family business in the 1930s, the family patriarch's dashing elder son decides that the family needs an infusion of new blood. A matchmaker presents him with a photo of a pretty German nursery school teacher. When the two meet, they instantly fall in love, but because Hungary has an alliance with Germany, and the Third Reich prohibits marriage between Gentiles and Jews, the couple must hide their union. Their marriage ultimately stands as a dark foreshadowing of rougher times to come as troubles ensue with the advent of World War II, when the family, its employees and servants must retreat to the basement, where the shop emerges increasingly as a refuge in a world growing more violent and less tolerant.
