Ildikó Tóth

Between 1993 and 1999, one man robbed 29 financial institutions in Budapest. Banks, post offices and even travel agencies fell victim to his crime spree. The police had no leads and no hope of finding him during his six-year stint. The only clue left behind at the crime scenes was the distinct aroma of whiskey. The media christened him the “Whiskey Bandit”. Never physically harming anyone, many began to eagerly follow his escapades through the media. A Transylvanian immigrant, who also happened to be a goalie for one of the city's largest hockey teams, named Attila Ambrus, was finally identified as the “Whiskey Bandit”. The police had finally captured him... or so they thought.

Anna, a celebrated Transylvanian actress starring at Hungary’s National Theatre in the mid-1960s, falls in love with an Olympic champion she meets at a reception, much to the regime’s displeasure, which has other plans for the multilingual star as an official hostess for visiting dignitaries. As the secret service weaves its manipulative web across every facet of her life, Anna, fortified by her love, proves a formidable opponent to their schemes.

In a futuristic society, rebels fighting against a fascist state are aided by a group of roller-skating nuns called the Bod Sisters.

A post mortem photographer and a little girl confront ghosts in a haunted village after the First World War.

Underrated in light of its current (February 4, 2007) IMDb score of 6.4, this film reminded me of what Joseph Heller's 'Something Happened' could look like if a film was to be made out of it. Our middle-aged character's life is in a fragile balance at the start and soon that balance will, of course, be disturbed. Even without much in the way of drama at first, an at times nightmarish reality intermingles with nightmares, and, typically for a movie from this region, state bureaucracy and the absurdities of a semi-legal order play a role in moving developments along. So what is it that awaits our hero down the informal road he is officially sent? Complete deconstruction? Or the 'unbearable lightness of being'? If you give the movie the time to unfold, it will reward you revealing an entertaining concept by the end.

The reformed priest of Gát, Pap Énók, gets married. He is engaged to the worthy Miss Ica Zádor from Malomsk and Zádor. At the Easter 'priestess election ball', Énók could have chosen a wife from among thirty-five Gáti girls, but he asked the thirty-sixth, Ica, a young lady from Pest. Enoch, of peasant origin, had studied his way up to the middle-class intellectuals of the countryside. Ica, the scion of a ruined noble family, comes from Budapest to a low-class marriage, but Ica's rise to office could bring her back into the higher social circles she had lost through the family's decline. They married for love, but both were guided by interest and expectation. Ica is a vivacious woman of the world, dissatisfied, bored, longing to return to life and society in Pest. She finds strange amusements: sometimes she embraces, sometimes she torments her master. Enoch is head over heels in love, puts up with everything, and in return happily accepts the kisses he is rewarded with.

Tibor Malkáv is an andaverage 37-year-old man, who though not rich, leads a comfortable and uncomplicated life. All this changes when he finds out his mother is dying of cancer and the cost of surgery is well beyond his means. A one-eyed man known as the Cyclops offers Tibor a solution to his financial woes, however, there is a catch and Tibor has to kill someone in return. What follows is a chain reaction that has long-lasting and unexpected results.

The Aurora Borealis is a story of family that is rich in twists and turns. It breaks the depths of the relationship between mother and daughter. A successful lawyer in Vienna, Olga is called back to Hungary when her old mother, Mary suddenly falls into a coma. While Mary is floating between life and death, Olga finds a deeply silent secret. The increasingly passionate research leads back to the post-war Europe of the '50s.