János Görbe

Story of a young teacher starting to work in rural Hungary

After the failure of the Kossuth's revolution of 1848, people suspected of supporting the revolution are sent to prison camps. Years later, partisans led by outlaw Sándor Rózsa still run rampant. Although the authorities do not know the identities of the partisans, they round up suspects and try to root them out by any means necessary.

A simple, religious Hungarian woodcutter lives with his wife and boy child with a small community of squatters among the peaceful mountains of Transylvania until a lumber company claims their land and forces them all to become company workers or else leave the land. This 1942 Hungarian film takes a detailed and unflinching look at the hardships of mountain living, and the realistic approach proved influential to the Neorealist movement in Italian cinema. Hungarian master director Istvan Szots won the Biennale Cup at the Venice Film Festival for his auspicious debut, but the film was banned by the Nazis as "too Catholic" and not publicly exhibited until after World War II.

Three people – a returned prisoner of war, his beautiful second wife, and the possessive, hunchbacked spinster who is his sister-in-law by his first marriage – are isolated in a little house under an extinct volcano, where each strives for personal happiness but is suffocated by their dependence on the others.

September 1952 in a mine in Northern-Hungary after an explosion water breaks in from the neighbouring shaft and fourteen miners become trapped. The whole country unites to save them.

Marci is drafted from a typical block building in the 6th district in Pest. He says good-bye to Juli living in the same house, with whom they are both very much fond of each other, but neither of them makes a confession. Juli works in a factory, and with her friend Gizus she goes out in the evening for dancing and drinking. After a year, Marci comes back for holiday, he is full of love.

Anika, the daughter of the Greek partisan refugee and the Hungarian medical student, Zoltán fall in passionate love. But Anika's mother wants her to marry a Greek, for she is very homesick and wants to go home. The under-age girl cannot protest.

In 1905 Hungary, a young village woman has just undergone a marriage to the spoiled son of a man to whom her father is indebted, in order that the debt be cancelled, only to be spirited away by her true love, a young peasant, by whom she soon becomes pregnant. Together they attempt to find a way to buy up her father's debt and also pay for a divorce from her husband, against various odds.

March 15, 1848; the revolution breaks out in the town of Pest. Yet at café Pilvax, in among he revolutionary youth, there is the informer of the imperial court as well. Hearing the news of the attack led by Jellasics, the inhabitants of the villages pour into the national army, and Hajdú Gyurka also escapes from his landlord. Petőfi is there at the camp of the revolutionaries, raising them to enthusiasm with his poetry.

During World War I, an ancient feud divides the industrial area in the county of Nógrád. The workers of the steal factory start a strike, but the miners do not support their cause. Sanyi from the steal factory and Ilonka from the mining community fall in love with each other, but can only meet secretly. When the boy dances with the girl in the pub of the miners, he is recognised and knocked down.

1932, Budapest. Gere János, an unemployed worker searching for employment in the capital, is organised into the secret police after a raid. Summary justice is declared, and the police wants to find an illegal communist press at any price. Gere, wandering about in the dark city, joins a man, helping him to carry his luggage. Slowly, Gere learns that his companion is a Communist and his task is to keep the press machine hidden from the police.

October, 1956. Colonel lieutenant Szabó sends a platoon with the mission of calming the people demonstrating in the town. The platoon is lined up under the command of Lieutenant Csendes and the soldiers aim at the demonstrators. Szusza Kis changes sides, and Csendes is unable to shoot at his childhood mate. They withdraw.

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.

A Hungarian soldier returning from fighting in the Second World War marries the woman he believes to be the widow of a former comrade who he thinks died in the POW camp in which they were held.

An aspiring film student is denied a scholarship to the state-funded university when his father is thrown in jail. The man had stopped a train in order to facilitate the union between two old friends. The son then takes a job as a land surveyor and meets a Greek man who works towards the collective benefits of the peasants. The man is killed in a peasant uprising prompted by a bureaucratic boondoggle. The surveyor looks after the man's widow as his emerging political and social awareness leads him take a stand against government injustice. Another incident, in which gypsies are rounded up by state hygiene workers, further galvanizes the man's beliefs. He photographs the incident, and his work allows him to be accepted into the school from which he was previously denied admission.

Mihály, a retired foundryman has brought up his sons in a very disciplined and strict way, and as a result they have become a doctor, an engineer, and a teacher. However, his half orphan grandson, Misi, has been spoilt, and become skilled in nothing else really but riding his motorbike and going to parties. He has been involved in shady businesses a number of times already. Having experienced so many difficulties, privation and hardship in his own life and now seeing Misi's irresponsible lifestyle, the old man's bitterness is growing day by day.

Lint and his lover are sailing and making fun absent-mindedly at Lake Balaton when the anchor suddenly gets stuck in a bomb in the mud. Lint gets hurt while fussing about under the water. A strong storm breaks out when they reach the shore. In the local restaurant the man recalls his memories of war.

Lugosi works in the locomotive factory, earning little. He does not feel at ease in the world. One reason for his discontent is that his wife - a tractor factory worker - earns more than he does, and another is that she has even had her innovation accepted, while his has not. And because trouble doesn't come alone, poor Lugosi gets involved in a sabotage case.

A crusading newspaper reporter covers the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Initially critical of the communists, the feature later espouses the virtues of the social changes implemented since the invasion. The title refers to the period of time the reporter spent interviewing witnesses to the invasion.

In the aftermath of World War II, a Hungarian teenager, captured by Soviet troops, forms an unlikely bond with a Russian soldier in a remote prison camp.

The young heartbreaker Thomas Laurends, son of a wealthy Hamburg family, is sent to Hungary to buy horses for his father's stud farm. This comes in very handy for Thomas. It allows him to escape his clingy girlfriend Karin for a while. However, his stay is complicated when Karin follows him to the Puszta, but Thomas has fallen in love with the passionate Tery in the meantime.

The 16th century Kecskemét troubled by both the Kurutses and the Labancs would like a Bey from the Buda pasha to defend them in exchange for four beautiful girls, but only gets a caftan. It was a good deal, however. All Muslims fall on their knees when they see the magic caftan and fulfil its owner's wish.

Sándor Vedres, a painter, learns that his success is not due to his talent, but to the intervention of his model, the flirtatious Marianne, and flees to the Transylvanian mountains with a disappointed heart and shaken self-confidence. His calm is disturbed by the appearance of Klara, who looks exactly like Marianne. His barely healed wounds are torn open by the encounter, he runs away upset and falls into an abyss. She is found unconscious. Marianne's sister, the noble-hearted Klára, carefully tends to the stricken man, who soon recovers but remains mute. The mute painter discovers pure love alongside the kind-hearted girl, and his paintings of the mountains are rewarded with a prize at the exhibition in the capital. News of his success attracts the old lover, but not the love of Klára and Sándor.

Pista Rácz, bearer of the title "outstanding workman" is opposed to all forms of sport, and is especially antagonized by Jóska Teleki, a first-class sportsman, who seems to be a drawback for Rácz's brigade in terms of work quantity performance figures.

A female worker in Socialist Hungary gains the acceptance of her male colleagues.

Mocorgó, the well-meaning worker boy, is a tough guy. In his 40s he is still a mechanic's apprentice, but he is disappointed by his family, women and friends, and becomes a criminal. He goes to prison several times and tells the story of his life to the writer, who follows his story until 1956, until Mocorgó's death.

A chain of short stories about the lives of the employees of the Ikarus bus factory.

The outbreak of war ends the love of Mária and Endre. Mária is still expecting the return of Endre, father of Anna, her daughter, who was born while her father was away. The war is long over. A few decades elapse, and a letter is accidentally discovered in a post office building now under reconstruction.

Jóska has become a Communist in the Csillag prison in Szeged. In the meantime, Gábor successfully talks people in Jóska's native village out of joining the German-led Hungarian army.

A young peasant boy stands up to tyranny, aided by his trusting friend- a goose.

The changing and turbulent history of Hungary is seen through the eyes of three men over a 30-year period in this somber drama. The three recall the highlights of their lives in flashbacks as they reminisce in the mid 1960s. The venerable trio begin their story in the 1930s, through World War II, and the decade beyond the communist invasion of 1956.

The war is over, but the Bodog family is starving. Varg's neighbor takes Mihai Bodog with him to do restoration work. They are well paid for this work and Mihai can finally please his wife Erji and their young son. When the workers are later hired to build a bridge, Bodog, a specialist bridge builder, cannot resist the challenge and is hired. But this time the workers are delayed in paying their wages, so their family is once again in need. Erji is forced to look for work...

Dani, the few-month-old little boy born outside marriage is left by Eszter in the lap of her companion on the train. The widowed Aranka takes him willingly to her. The child is already ten years old and has a good life with Aranka. Then Géza enters their life and he does not welcome the child of someone else.

Set during a turbulent era of disquiet, fear, persecution and terror, which permeates every corner of post-WWI Hungarian society. In 1919, after just a few months of communist rule the Hungarian Republic of Councils falls victim to a nationalist counter-revolution. Admiral Horthy, leader of the nationalist far right movement, becomes the self-proclaimed regent of Hungary, and assumes power as the legal Head of State. Soldiers of the short-lived Hungarian Red Army are now on the run from relentless secret policemen and patrol units of the nationalist Royal Gendarme. If caught, ex-Red Army soldiers are executed without mercy or proper trial. István Cserzi, a former soldier of the Red Army has fled to the Great Hungarian Plains and has taken refuge on a farm, which is run by two sympathetic women.