Tibor Déry

In the spring of 1945, in bombed-out Budapest, a powerful boy, young István Kovács, recently arrived from the mountains, and a girl from Pest, Juli Szandál, who has lost everyone, meet. They fall in love and move into a hut in the suburbs. Juli is frightened by the giant's sincere feelings and naivety. Their love, which started off idyllically, is partly marked by this and partly by the difficulties of the post-war period...

The main character of the story which takes place in the twenties in Budapest is the poet Dr. Rácz György, who returns after ten years of absence. In a café he meets his former friend Lajos, who has just broken up with his lover, Márta, because of the wife of professor Büchler. The transiently formed, rootless Rácz gets entangled into the sophisticated, complicated love affairs of bored or tired ladies.

In 1930s Hungary, budding aristocrat Lőrinc Parcen Nagy undergoes a moral awakening. He abandons his privileged life to join the socialist underground, facing the harsh realities of class struggle and the approach of WWII.

Luca, who regularly visits her bedridden mother-in-law, hides from her the fact that János, his son, has been arrested on a trumped up political charge.

Károly Makk strings together two novellas by Tibor Déry. A téglafal mögött is set in the early 1950s. Comrade Bódi, an embittered party worker, reports his fellow workers who are stealing ‘the assets of the people’ from the factory. During the subsequent public investigation, one of them commits suicide. The camera of Makk tells the story of the period through the crumpled face of Jozef Króner, the blank, hopeless stare of Mari Törőcsik and images of a decaying factory site. In Philemon és Baucis, like in Szerelem, the subject of ageing is tied to the traumas of the 1950s. History turns the idyllic private life of an elderly couple (Elma Bulla and Antal Páger) upside down. The 1956 uprising sweeps an injured fighter their way. The old man helps as best he can while his wife desperately tries to save her husband…

Nothing is as dangerous to a really good group of friends as a woman and love. At least according to Frank, the brigade leader, who not only protects cohesion but also work performance when he gives advice to his colleagues. It's easy for him, of course, because he's never been in love. Not so his friends, who are still courting the travelling circus artists. But what goes around comes around. Then Klári, the forklift girl, appears...

Every member of a small community in the snow-capped Bükk Mountains is trying to help the doctor get to István Simon forester's house where his wife is about to give birth to their first child.