East Side Stories

Kicsimarapagoda

The prompter's wife finally gets pregnant after 12 years of trying. On New Year's Eve, a large, bohemian group of friends celebrates the upcoming baby and the new year.

White Palms

Having suffered as a boy under a brutal Communist-era coach, champion Hungarian gymnast Miklos moves to Canada years later in search of a new start - only to find himself unwittingly perpetuating the very same cycle of abuse among his own pupils.

Tamara

Sticky Matters

A girl is on the skids because of love. A short tempered and passionate young man falls in love with the girl. His emotions are so powerful that he is prepared to surrender his whole personality. The boy has a good friend, who is not sure whether their bond is friendly or homosexual. Before the girl arrived, the friendship was close, but now she has thrown a spanner in the works. How do they react to the new situation?

Good Night, Prince!

András comes to Budapest because he failed at his school-leaving exam and he would like his aunt, a maths teacher to prepare him for the next exam. The boy wants to be an actor and intends to get to Hollywood once. His cousins and friends are making a film.

Bad Poems

33-years old Tamás Merthner is heartbroken, after his girlfriend Anna, who is on a scholarship in Paris, breaks up with him. While wallowing in self-pity, Tamás takes a trip down memory lane to figure out if love only exists when it's practically gone. As he's trying to pick up the pieces, he begins to realize what makes this current society so confused, which gives us a highly subjective view of Hungary's present.

The Informant

Behind the Iron Curtain, Geri leaves for college, looks forward to meeting girls and partying and joins a group of radicals led by the charismatic Száva. But Geri has a secret. He’s an informant of the totalitarian state and to save his brother, he’s been forced to spy on his new friends for State Security.

Mirage

Francis is an African soccer player whose life comes spiraling down after he fixes a match. Soon, he's on the run, taking shelter at a mountain ranch led by a deadly crime boss. Soon, Francis inspires revolt among the boss's workers, putting his life on the line for freedom.

Power

A boy is accidentally killed at an informal hunt somewhere on the border of two European countries. One of the people involved is Minister Berger, the hot candidate for the influential post of High Commissioner for Water Management, who will be tasked with finding the solution to increasing water shortages across Europe. The government hires secret agent Steiner to hush up the scandal. The more he investigates the case, the more embroiled he becomes in dilemmas of power and its execution.

Growing Down

Sándor, a widower, is the only witness to a serious accident involving his stepdaughter and youngest son. Now he faces a dilemma: should he tell the truth and live with the consequences? Or lie and save his son from juvenile detention?

It's Not the Time of My Life

Eszter, her husband Farkas, and their five-year-old son Bruno are paid an unexpected visit in the middle of the night. Eszter’s sister Ernella, her husband Albert and daughter Laura have returned from a year spent in Scotland where, contrary to expectations, they weren’t able to settle down. It soon becomes clear that the two families had never really been in tune with one another.

Bibliothèque Pascal

A single mother's struggle to support her child leads her into the surreal netherworld of illegal sexual enterprises, with her finally ending up in the Bibliothèque Pascal; an elegant but bizarre house of prostitution in which men can re-enact sexual scenarios inspired by great works of literature for a hefty fee.

Brats

1989 in Budapest. A gang of teenagers is roaming about in the city. They are hanging around, longing away from here, their parents do not care about them. They sustain themselves by breaking up cars and by minor robberies.

Treasure City

Dropped into a web of family, sexual, political and romantic relationships where nothing is quite what it seems. One event leads to something else, people appear in one situation and reappear in another and by the end the lives of 22 people intersect in unpredictable ways during a 90-minute period on one magical night in the city they share.

The Gambler

The story of a wealth Eastern European family in Las Vegas, whose misunderstanding of American ways results in the loss of their dignity and self-respect.

Land of Warm Waters

The Buharovs, as the harbingers of a supra-human world, blend their instinctive cosmos with a kind of quiet poetry to lead the viewer into the Land of Warm Waters and onwards to new dimensions of storytelling.

Flow

A filmmaker talks about his work and love life with an unseen friend behind the camera. We also watch four of his short films.

Paris Je T'aime

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to choose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

The Bible: In the Beginning...

Covering only the first 22 chapters of the Book of Genesis, vignettes include: Adam and Eve frolicking in the Garden of Eden until their indulgence in the forbidden fruit sees them driven out; Cain murdering his brother Abel; Noah building an ark to preserve the animals of the world from the coming flood; and Abraham making a covenant with God.

Princess

The story of August who loses his beloved sister Christina, a former porn star known as The Princess. He adopts Christina's five-year-old daughter Mia. Weighed down by grief and guilt, August breaks down and with Mia in tow, he embarks on a mission of vengeance to erase Christina's pornographic legacy.