On the Roofs of Budapest

1985. Hungary has elections for the first time since long where more than one candidate is allowed to run. The engineer Bodnár is the most popular man in the rural town, who has defended the microclimate of the neighbourhood against a harmful project. Before the elections he is also put on the list. Local power launches a fight against him,

The film director starts shooting his film about the manager of a large corporation who committed suicide for mysterious reasons. As the cumbersome process of making a film goes along, everybody involved in it starts having differing opinions of the tragedy, its causes and its victim.

This film is a documentaristic dispute about the possibilities of young people to assert themselves, to make a career. Zsuzsa is a third-year university student studying pedagogy. She has been dating Zoltán for three years, and her thinking has been fundamentally shaped by this relationship. Yet now she would like to break up with him.

The scene is a small town in the Hungarian Plain, the time is Summer 1945. The diggers who have been left out of land distribution are demonstrating in front of the City Hall. Upon the advice of an unemployed engineer having returned from captivity, an uncultivated and barren piece of land is distributed among them.

Documentary film.

Miskei, the popular and dynamic president of a co-op falls in love with Mari, the attractive wife of the elderly Pató. The deeply feeling woman is fed up with the service beside the haughty land holder, she is longing for tenderness and a child. The passion of Miskei is growing when he sees how crudely, humiliating Pató treats her. During a powerful summer shower, when chance brings them together in an abandoned press house, he storms on Mari confessing love. The woman refuses him bitterly. Miskei calms down and he keeps on expressing his love and high esteem with the woman by steadfast and tiny compliments. Early one morning Mari leaves her husband and sets off to the city to learn and to begin a new life.

A tableau of the most famous Hungarian beat bands whose fans speak about what music means to them, while some aging people explain why they think this savage type of music should be banned, censored, or at least played without drums.

The engineer Ambrus has been suspended in his job because he publicly called the attention of the customers to a construction mistake of some goods designed to be exported. His immediate boss learns the news on a business trip to Paris. He meets his old friend Lendvay, an emigrant from Hungary, and his French wife in a cellar bar. After their talk Benkő starts seeing things in a different perspective. When he returns home, he decides to take a stand for Ambrus against Ferenczi, the general director, despite his wife's and the old director's advice.

1943. French POWs escape through Hungary towards the Balkan. Jacques and Gérard are caught and taken to an internment camp at Lake Balaton. Jacques meets Klári here, who was abandoned by her military officer husband for her Jewish origin. Both want to have a short affair, but love unfolds between them.

The plot of the film starts at the beginning of the century, in the heyday of the Andrássy and Károlyi families, during the ever increasing crisis of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and ends with the emigration of the Károlyi couple after the collapse of the 1918-19 revolutions. It tells the story of this historical period (war, revolution, take-over by the proletariat, dictatorship) from the view of an extremely wealthy lady, Andrássy Katinka. The authors tried to evoke the special story during which a strange and unique woman gets thoroughly involved in history through her love and at the same time keeps her own identity and self-governance.

Andras Kovacs' film, considered one of the most important Hungarian films of the 1960s, centers around four men who await trial for their involvement in the massacre of several thousand Jewish and Serbian people of Novi Sad in 1942. Each denies any responsibility, claiming that they were only following orders. The film is significant for its willingness to address the subject of Hungary's role in WWII, which was taboo at the time of the its release.

Based on the novel of the same name by Lajos Meszterházy about the escape from prison of two communists sentenced to death. The movie is set in 1921, two years after the defeat of the Hungarian Soviet Republic.

In 1950, when a young communist director arrives to take charge of a stud farm near the Hungarian borders, his efforts to draw on the experience of the old hands there meet with little success. Janit Busó is not accepted by the farm workers, who were exiled here and branded as class enemies. Busó tries to gain authority, which is not easy among these proud, resentful people who are skilled in their profession. In his difficult situation, the dubious support he receives from the party does more harm than good.

The film is a true account of the drama of "non-action" on 14th and 15th of October, 1944. The Nazis, having a straightforward program, occupy Hungary with little or no difficulty, as the Hungarian political leadership had no unambiguous program for responding to possible steps of the Nazis. In spite of the secretly signed cease-fire agreement and proclamation, Horty gives up all plans of resistance at the news of the kidnapping of his son. The Nazis take over power and roll up the so-called conspiracy aimed at Hungary's breaking away from the German alliance.