János Koltai

Hungarian Passion (2021)

The film, taking place in 1950, presents the story of Father Leopold and the monks of his order struggling to once again revive Christianity in a country trying to scrape itself together after the war. Initially, the communist powers do not hinder their wo ...

Randevú Budapesten (1989)

Hungarians (1978)

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 ...

Blindfold (1974)

The scene is Ukraine. In 1943, after the Hungarian' defeat at the river Don, soldier Balogh decides to visit his family. ...

The Myth-Makers (1974)

Eighteen years after the failure of the revolution and freedom fighting 1848-49, the politicians of Hungary preparing for a compromise with Austria try to make use of the symbol of the revolution, the figure of the poet Petőfi Sándor, to their own advant ...

Fallow Land (1973)

The story of the film with a touch of journalistic atmosphere takes place in the autumn 1919 after the fall of the proletarian dictatorship. The main figure is Zilahy Kálmán, a high-school teacher, very much attracted to Ady's ideology. He is, at the sam ...

Dead Landscape (1972)

This Hungarian film chronicles the slow deterioration in the life of Juli, a farmer's wife. As the countryside grows ever more deserted because people are moving to towns or large collective farms, she spends more and more time alone. Despite her best effo ...

Red Psalm (1972)

Set in the 1890s on the Hungarian plains, a group of farm workers go on strike in which they face harsh reprisals and the reality of revolt, oppression, morality and violence. ...

Agnus Dei (1971)

Allegory of the suppression of the 1919 revolution and the advent of fascism in Hungary; in the countryside, a unit of the revolutionary army spares the life of father Vargha, a fanatical priest. He comes back and leads massacres. A new force, represented ...

Judgement (1970)

The film is a historic parable about the topicality of revolution. 1514. The peasants' uprising is over, Dózsa has been arrested. Werbőczy tries to get the imprisoned peasant leader deny the revolution and offers him the lives of his people in exchange. ...

On Home Grounds (1969)

This ironic comedy is set in the god-forsaken Kiskúnbékás, at the end of the fifties. ...

Silence and Cry (1968)

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-re ...

Baptism (1968)

A 40-year-old sculptor returns home to witness the baptism of his young nephew. His return prompts a series of flashbacks to his youth and the political upheaval experienced by his family and friends. ...

The Valley (1968)

Five deserters hide in a village inhabited only by women. ...

Ten Thousand Days (1967)

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 ...

Tök az adu (1967)

A barber goes for a walk on an average Sunday morning, and end up winning an other guy's wife on card. ...

Late Season (1967)

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. ...

A múmia közbeszól (1967)

A Hungarian Nabob 2: Karpathy Zoltan (1966)

On the novel by Mór Jókai. The first half of the XVIII century. Several decades of life of a noble family Karpati. ...

Cold Days (1966)

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 respons ...

The Sack (1966)

For the first time after 11 years, Simon, a young historian visits the village of his childhood at Balaton and Aunt Lina, his foster-mother. He gets upset by what he experiences there: the old woman's troublesome and vexing everydays, her quiet sadness. He ...

The Round-Up (1966)

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 ...

No Love, Please (1965)

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, b ...

My Way Home (1965)

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. ...

New Gilgames (1963)

The story recalling the spirit of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian king quarrelling with his approaching death, takes place in a cancer hospital in Budapest. Dávid, the young ethnography scientist resigned to his lot and is indifferent to his approaching death. Hi ...

Cantata (1963)

A young doctor undergoes a spiritual crisis when he returns to his rural home. ...

Grotesque (1963)

Huszárik's graduation film was another short entitled Groteszk (Grotesque) in 1963 about a strange train voyage of an artist carrying his own picture. ...

The Lost Paradise (1962)

​A young doctor named Zoltán flees Budapest for his father's rural estate after performing an illegal abortion on his lover that results in her death. While hiding in the countryside, he attempts to grapple with his guilt and the moral weight of his act ...

Two Half-Times in Hell (1961)

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. ...