Fourteen Lives

In 1963 in Tihany, somebody addresses the writer Gábor Náday. He is reminded of a night drive in 1944 that saved his life. Painful memories start coming to Náday.

War criminal Baradla Géza returns after 25 years, alongside his ex-accomplice, Obrád Simon, to the village where he burned occupied homes and executed partisans. The ex squad-leader is chased to this place by his 'heroic deed' and the memory of his love. Like a maniac, he seeks to forgive the villagers for having killed six of his soldiers.

Vörös Hajnal (Red Dawn), a co-operative is the venue of skylarking, while the storm destroys the wheat which is to be harvested soon. Árendás, a middle-peasant, voices severe accusations against members of the co-operative: out of negligence, they failed to keep the ditches clean. It is always the soft option they seem to favour, while the necessity of properly taking care of the farmlands is long-forgotten. Members of the co-operative and the village people are deeply divided.

Against the backdrop of the Adolph Eichmann trials, an elderly paraplegic pharmacist is summoned to the police station, where he believes that his hidden wartime guilt has caught up with him, unaware that it is all in fact an elaborate practical joke.

Hungary, 1950s. József Pelikán, who works as a dam keeper on the Danube, meets by chance Zoltán Dániel, an old friend whom he saved from death years before and who is now a powerful politician.

The elite of political and business life of the country town gather to celebrate the namesday of Haudek László in the luxury villa. Everything begins just as usual, but now an incident disturbs the stag party.

20-year-old Gida, having just survived his first amourous disappointment, falls for Katinka, the young widow, at first sight.

The story, which takes place in the reform era, centres around Mrs. Déry, a legendary actress, who, along with her fellow actors and actresses, travels around the country to become the herald of the Hungarian language, performing in villages and towns up and down the land as strolling players, a woman who is not put off by the prospect of starvation and the dearth of a home to return to and security to live in.

In 1944 Budapest, a watchmaker, a book seller and a carpenter are drinking in a bar with the owner, when they are joined by a stranger. The watchmaker poses a hypothetical that will change their lives forever.

In turn-of-the-century Budapest, teenage gangs the Paul Street Boys and the Red Shirts have been skirmishing over a vacant lot. When the Red Shirts decide to drive the Paul Street Boys out, they appoint small, sickly Nemescek to spy on their opponents.

To celebrate Hitler's birthday, a soccer match is organised between the Germans and a group of Hungarian political prisoners, one of whom is a famous pre-war football star.

In a rural scenery in the throes of difficult changes lives humble but promising young farmer girl Mari Pataki. Her father forbids her from seeing the man she loves. The father, above all preoccupied by work on the fields and prospective wealth, decides to give his daughter in marriage to his older business partner. 'Land marries land', he says, a phrase which seems to be the unyielding rule of the Hungarian peasantry. But the younger lover is ready to confront any challenge to keep Mari's love.

In 1918, Fábián Bálint is forced to kill on the Italian front. At home, his sons drown the priest, the lover of their mother, in the river Kraszna, an action that drives her insane. Following his return home, Bálint becomes the liveried coachman of the baron.

The Tóth family resides in Northern Hungary. The couple has a daughter and a son, the latter a member of the armed forces. When his weary major is ordered to take a vacation, the son talks him into a visit to his family home. Hilarity ensues when the Tóths go overboard trying to make things pleasant for the visiting major in hopes of an easier life for their son, the soldier.

The head of the nunnery is dying, and the members are divided in two groups as the election of the new head approaches. Led by Virginia, the younger nuns stand up for changing the strict religious dogmas and would like a modern school with genuine science, a bathroom to be built, and a freer spirit. Their candidate is sister Magdolna, who went to secular universities, too. The seminarists, led by Király Erzsi, also rebel against the older nuns' strict discipline and the depressed atmosphere of the institution. However, Magdolna does not want to stay involved in the fight because she is deterred by Virginia's sinful attraction towards her and the tools Virginia is using to gain victory at any price.

A group of landless Hungarian peasants accept work as migrant-labourers on a northern German farm where the wages are good, and the wives and family are allowed to accompany them. Though in the midst of WWII, they are relatively well-off. However, as they witness the treatment accorded to POWs and others not so gently regarded, and at the conclusion of the year's harvest, they choose to return to Hungary and are quickly swept up in the tides of war.