In the first case, a list was put out in 1968 for top 12 Hungarian films from 1948 - 1968.
Frigyes Bán: Treasured Earth Miklós Jancsó: The Round-Up Zoltán Fábri: Merry-Go-Round András Kovács: Cold Days Félix Máriássy: Budapest Spring Zoltán Fábri: Professor Hannibal Imre Fehér: In Soldier's Uniform Károly Makk: The House Under the Rocks Ferenc Kósa: Ten Thousand Days István Gaál: Sodrásban Márton Keleti: The Corporal and the Others István Szabó: Father
There was a New Budapest Twelve list put in 2000.
Miklós Jancsó: The Round-Up Károly Makk: Love Zoltán Huszárik: Szindbád István Szőts: People of the Mountains Géza Radványi: Somewhere in Europe Péter Gothár: Time Stands Still István Székely: Hyppolit, the Butler Zoltán Fábri: Merry-Go-Round András Jeles: Little Valentino Ildikó Enyedi: My 20th Century István Szabó: Father Zoltán Fábri: Professor Hannibal
I have only seen half of the above 2000 list so I still have some work to do. Although, one glaring omission from the above list gives me pause. There isn’t a single title by Béla Tarr. By 2000, he had directed 8 films including Sátántangó. Werckmeister Harmonies was released in 2000 so perhaps if that was not seen, then surely 7 of his titles of would have been considered. This omission doesn’t seem like a mistake.
“But the discrepancy between the appreciation of Tarr’s films on the international and on the national level is striking. And I am not talking about the discrepancy between an elite’s taste and the popular taste. This would be obvious and needs no explanation. What I am talking about about here is a discrepancy within a Hungarian art-film audience, which right from the appearance of the Tarr style in 1988 became divided about its value.” page 172, ‘The Cinema of Béla Tarr’, András Bálint Kovács
This gap between directors who are popular locally vs internationally isn’t isolated to Hungarian cinema but takes place in many other nations as well, where some directors find much more appreciation internationally as opposed to locally. Some examples such as Carlos Reygadas (Mexico), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand) and Lav Diaz (Philippines) come to mind while a handful of Indian directors do well at international film festivals yet hardly ever get their films shown locally.
While I still have some catching up to do for Hungarian films, here is my current list.
Top 10 Hungarian Films of All Time
1. Sátántangó (1994, Béla Tarr)
Béla Tarr’s almost 7.5 hour Sátántangó is a cinematic wonder. The film is hypnotic and an immersive experience which showcases the best elements of Tarr’s cinema: long takes, sweeping camera movements, harsh realism, artistic compositions and unforgettable sounds (howling winds, relentless rain).
2. Adoption (1975, Márta Mészáros)
It is easy to see why this is the first film by a woman to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. The film’s creative camerawork brings the material alive and lends a high degree of intimacy with the characters.
3. The Round-Up (1966, Miklós Jancsó)
The setting is 1880s Hungary but the abstract depiction of events has parallels in our contemporary world. This was also true back in 1966 when the film came out as it echoed 1960s Hungary and also implied events in Hungary during WWII. This is because the film shows how power is held and abused while highlighting those who will do or say anything to survive.
On another note, the film’s set coupled with the discussions remind me of the morality battles shown in Glauber Rocha’s parched Brazilian landscape. 4. The Fifth Seal (1976, Zoltán Fábri)
A dizzying film packed with philosophical ideas some of which will always be relevant due to how people align with differing ideologies.
5. The Witness (A tanú, 1969, Péter Bacsó)
Banned for over a decade in Hungary, Bacsó's wicked satire about communism is also a rare humourous film on this list. The Witness shows how the changing political situation also changes what is acceptable behaviour and what is deemed appropriate. Unfortunately in the film, József Pelikán (Ferenc Kállai) finds himself on the wrong side at all times. The film also features the famous Hungarian director Zoltán Fábri playing a politician.
6. Current (Sodrásban, 1964, István Gaál)
István Gaál’s Current has a different look and feel from the other Hungarian films on this list. The depiction of friends spending a lazy afternoon swimming initially evokes French cinema. However, when one of the friends disappears, the introspection that the others go through feels like something out of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films. 7. On Body and Soul (2017, Ildikó Enyedi)
Ildikó Enyedi won the Golden Bear at Berlin for this smart film which depicts our isolated contemporary society where real connections are hard to come by.
Enyedi’s film My 20th Century was named on the 2000 'Budapest Twelve' list but I prefer On Body and Soul instead. 8. Kontroll (2003, Nimród Antal)
A wild film that follows the lives of the Budapest underground subway metro staff on their daily routines. The humorous first half looks at the insanity, the male power games, the inner turmoils, and hilarious passengers but the second half shifts gears and explores the shades of darkness lurking beneath the surface.
9. Angi Vera (1979, Pál Gábor)
Using the main character Vera (Vera Pap) as a lens, the film shows how one can assimilate in a party structure and convince leaders of their dedication to the cause. In addition, one can use the examples in the film to extrapolate how easy it would have been for neighbours to turn on each other not only in Hungary but across multiple regions (Eastern Europe, Latin America, Middle East to name a few) over the last few decades. 10. The Turin Horse (2011, Béla Tarr/Ágnes Hranitzky)
Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky craft their unique end of the world scenario with a few bare essentials: an old man, obedient daughter, rebel horse, untrustworthy visitors, an angry wind, potato, bucket, well, table, chair and a window. The film features an array of reverse and sideway shots that manage to open up space in a confined house setting. Honourable mentions (alphabetical order as per English titles):
The Falcons (1970, István Gaál) Mephisto (1981, István Szabó) Son of Saul (2015, László Nemes) Son of the White Mare (Fehérlófia, 1981, Marcell Jankovics) Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Béla Tarr/Ágnes Hranitzky)
1. The Time That Remains (2009, Palestine co-production, Elia Sulieman)
Elia Sulieman’s films often draw references to Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati due to Sulieman playing a character with deadpan expressions in absurd scenarios. However, there is nothing funny or absurd for most of Sulieman’s brilliant film The Time That Remains. That is because the film deals with the tragic expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 (‘nakba’), an event that created fissures and divisions in the Middle East, none of which have ever been healed and have gotten worse in the seven decades since. For the longest time, most of the world believed that Palestinians left peacefully of their own accord in 1948 but that has been proven to be a lie. Sulieman’s film shows that lie but doesn’t dive into details. Instead, a few scenes show the forceful surrender and forced departure of Palestinians. Events cover a few decades and centre around Fuad Sulieman (played brilliantly by Saleh Bakri) and his family/friends/accomplises. The director enters the frame in the film’s final third as the grown up version of Fuad’s son. Some of the director’s trademark humour attempts to enter the frame in the final 20 minutes but that can’t hide the tragedy of what has unfolded since 1948.
2. Chronicles of the Years of Fire (1975, Algeria, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina)
Also known as Chronicle of the Years of Embers
An epic film that is ambitious in scope and charts a timeline from WWII to Algerian freedom. The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes 1975 and it is easy to see why.
The film starts off by depicting hardships of village life made worse due to a combination of the harsh weather and lack of water (rain coupled with a dam reducing access). This results in locals migrating from the village to the city for a better life by leaving their land, family and roots behind. Once in the city, the villagers are exposed to political ideas as topics of revolution, independence and World War occupy their thoughts. The film depicts that as WWII spreads, Algerians are forced to join France’s fight. The locals are tired of the French, which leads to some cheering for Germany, but they find themselves dragged into alliances and a war they want no part of. The film’s final segments show the emergence of Algeria’s quest for independence post-WWII and how revolutionaries are forced to hide in the mountains to carry out their attacks against the French.
3. Al-mummia (The Mummy, 1969, Egypt, Chadi Abdel Salam)
Also known as The Night of Counting the Years
A film that is often cited as a vital Egyptian and Arab film. Based on real life events of tomb looting, the film raises relevant questions about who should benefit from ancient Egyptian treasures: the locals or a central government.
4. Return to Homs (2013, Syria co-production, Talal Derki)
Once the Syrian Revolution started in 2011, Syrian and Western media were not allowed in the country. Derki was a rare person who was able to capture the events which makes the footage in the film essential in understanding what went on while the rest of the world continued to sleep. Derki and his crew continued filming even when bullets were fired in their direction. Such vérité footage results in many gut wrenching moments when people are on the verge of dying on-screen. By keeping the focus on a few key people, Return to Homs shows the human impact a revolution has on people. But one can also extrapolate these personal experiences to a larger scale and understand what motivates people to act the way they do. In essence, the film focuses on a few streets in a city but this microscopic focus helps shed a light on similar struggles going on in other streets not only across Syria but the rest of the Middle East.
5. Cairo Station (1958, Egypt, Youssef Chahine)
A classic work by Egyptian master Youssef Chahine that embodies what is best about Egyptian cinema of that era: charismatic characters, over the top scenarios, a hint of romance, seduction and a mystery.
6. Salt of This Sea (2007, Palestine co-production, Annemarie Jacir)
Many Palestinians left or were forced to leave their homes in 1948 with the hopes of returning one day but their ownership documents are meaningless because legally now their homes belong to someone else. So what happens when all the surviving members of 1948 are gone? Annemarie Jacir attempts to examine such questions by showing an example of a third generation exile who keeps the memories of pre-1948 alive. In the film, Soraya (Suheir Hammad) leaves her home in Brooklyn to visit her grandfather’s land and retrieve his money. However, the bank can no longer hand over the money because in their eyes that old Palestinian branch no longer exists. So Soraya decides to rob the bank along with two accomplices. What follows is a road movie but in this case, the road passes through non-existent towns and streets because the old Palestinian towns are either renamed or in ruins. What remains of the original towns? Only their memories. The film contains some scenarios that are hard to believe but as the film progresses, it becomes clear that Jacir has scripted these scenes to provide a space for a dialogue that is hardly present in the Western world. A dialogue about happened in 1948, what will happen when the original generation of 1948 has perished and what happens when even the memories of that generation are gone.
7. Pomegranates and Myrrh (2008, Palestine co-production, Najma Najjar)
Like Salt of this Sea, the film uses an individual family’s example to raise issues that are hardly talked about. In the film, soldiers arrive at a Palestinian Arab family’s home and annex the land as part of a security pretext. The soldiers provide no proof but show their guns. The elder son Zaid (Ashraf Farah) retaliates and is arrested. The family, including Zaid’s bride Kamar (Yasmine Elmasri), has to make trips to the court to get him released while providing documentation of their land. In the meantime, settlers arrive with their own guns and attempt to occupy that land.
This sounds like wildly scripted fiction but it is not. 2021-2022 events in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem captured by cell phones show that this has been going on for a long time but never talked about and no action is taken.
The film keeps the drama at the human level with Kamar yearning to find her own identity and stay sane while Zaid is behind bars. However, even though the film maintains focus on Kamar and Zaid and their collapsing relationship, it is hard not to draw comparisons with this individual family’s case with that of the larger Palestinian Arab community that went through similar or worse ordeal. 8. Beauty and the Dogs (2017, Tunisia, Kaouther Ben Hania)
Based on a true story, this powerful film shows in harsh detail the lack of justice that exists in a corrupt society where men allowed to abuse their power and get away with anything. In the film, Mariam (Mariam Al Ferjani) is a young girl who is raped by police causing her to undergo a nightmarish Kafkaesque sequence of events. Miriam tries to report the rape but she is unsure who to trust and is hounded by the police members who committed the crime. She can’t even turn to her family for help as they would judge her as harshly as the police hounding her. At times, the film is tough to view given the never ending psychological torture that Miriam is forced to undergo. However, that harshness is precisely the point because no matter how hard it is to view these scenarios, it is nowhere near as the painful struggle of women like Miriam. 9. The Cruel Sea (1972, Kuwait, Khalid Al Siddiq)
Original title: Bas ya Bahar
The first and only film I have seen from Kuwait so far. The film shows Kuwait before oil brought it plenty of wealth. In the early days before oil, pearl diving was a lucrative way of making a living. However, pearl diving often involved a treacherous 3-4 month journey out in the sea on a boat. The film shows the rituals of the diving season and dangers associated with it. This diving was at a time before scuba gear and other gear that would have these dives easier. In the film, Moussaed (Mohammed Al-Mansour) goes on the trip so that he can make enough money to get married to Nura (Amal Bakr). The genuine highlights of the film are around the close-up scenes of divers on boat at ocean and the impact of heat and exhaustion on the crew.
10. The Little Wars (1982, Lebanon co-production, Maroun Bagdadi)
The film depicts the start of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 by using a trio of characters as lens to view the differing ideologies and beliefs of those involved. Soraya (Soraya Khoury) is a woman caught in the middle as she watches the two men she likes, Nabil (Nabil Ismaïl) and Talal (Roger Hawa), go off in different political directions.
In real life at the time of filming, Nabil Ismaïl was a photographer covering the civil war as shown in Bagdadi’s documentary Whispers which compliments this feature. In Little Wars, Nabil plays a photographer but a fictionalized version who plots a kidnapping. In both Little Wars and Whispers, the bombed buildings form a backdrop to events and depict impact of the civil war on everyday lives of the residents.
11. It Must be Heaven (2019, Palestine co-production, Elia Suleiman)
Elia Suleiman reprises his mostly silent character who travels from Palestine to Paris and New York. At the film’s start, he quietly observes the regular routines in his neighbourhood whether it is his neighbour stealing lemons from his tree or neighbours fighting or steely confrontations with gang members at a restaurant. Deciding he wants a change of scenery, he packs his bags for Paris and then New York but he finds that no matter where he goes, he encounters reminders of his homeland. Suleiman’s last feature The Time That Remains contained little humour. So he makes up for it by packing this film with delightful vignettes that feature a mix of deadpan or slapstick comedy and offers a meditative look at questions of identity and human behaviour.
In his previous three features (Chronicle of a Disappearance, Divine Intervention, The Time That Remains) Suleiman's character doesn’t speak a word. But in this film, he finally speaks. When asked where he is from, he first says “Nazareth” and then clarifies “I am Palestinian”. His character has aged in the more than 23 years since his first feature. The decision to speak isn’t the only change because in the film’s final scene, his character has a slight change of expression, something which wasn’t present previously. Is the change in expression a sign of hope that maybe things will get better? Although, that hope is hard to come by given events since the film premiered at Cannes in 2019.
12. Le Grand Voyage (2004, Morocco co-production, Ismaël Ferroukhi)
A father wants to make the pilgrimage to Mecca so he asks his son to drive all the way from France to Saudi Arabia. The son is initially not happy with his father’s decision but gradually gains a better understanding of his father as the journey progresses. The film manages to stand out from a traditional road feature by incorporating some engaging elements, such as the mysterious Eastern European woman the duo pick up. The woman’s mysterious disappearance and reappearance fits in perfectly as does the predictable actions of the Turkish man the son befriends. The journey ends up becoming a metaphor for life and each experience helps broaden the son’s mind. The end point of the journey at Mecca features the film’s strongest and most emotional moment.
13. The Syrian Bride (2004, Syria co-production, Eran Riklis)
15. Between Heaven and Earth (2019, Palestine co-production, Najwa Najjar)
A beautiful film shows the difficulty of a couple in getting a divorce as the strains of occupation put up new obstacles and uncover a mysterious past.
16. Until the Birds Return (2017, Algeria co-production, Karim Moussaoui)
A fascinating film that combines three stories in a creative and surprising manner. Two music sequences come as a surprise but heighten the material.
Director Amin Sidi-Boumedine has crafted an incredible film that uses the Algerian civil war as a springboard to dive into long-lasting impact of violence and trauma on citizens. Aided by Kaname Onoyama’s stunning visuals, Abou Leila uses the vast beautiful desert as a worthy canvas to explore this nightmarish tale that is a blend of different genres evoking Lynchian, Western and metaphysical themes.
Nadine Labaki’s delightful debut feature is about five women debating their relationships. Four of the five women work in a beauty salon and their day is packed with gossip about their relationships and life in Beirut. The women also support each other and share a nice bond which comes in handy for situations when things get difficult. 19. A Summer in La Goulette (1996, Tunisia co-production, Férid Boughedir)
22. West Beirut (1998, Lebanon co-production, Ziad Doueiri)
A charming coming of age film related to the start of the Lebanese civil war that highlights how neighbours that got along one day became enemies the next.
23. The Silences of the Palace (1994, Tunisia co-production, Moufida Tlatli)
This film compliments and both contrasts Beauty and the Dogs. In Moufida's film, sexual abuse is not meant to talked about but instead quietly buried within the palace walls. 24. Divine Intervention (2002, Palestine co-production, Elia Suleiman)
Suleiman’s uses his trademark style to highlight absurd scenarios related to borders and checkpoints. There are some delightful references such as the red balloon free to roam across the border and the action sequence straight out of a comic book.
Mohamed Diab’s powerful film depicts the division in Egyptian society that came to a boil in 2013. The entire film takes place in the confined space of a police van and that creates a powerful immersive experience!
6 films by 5 Women directors: Annemarie Jacir (Salt of This Sea), Najma Najjar (Pomegranates and Myrrh, Between Heaven and Earth), Kaouther Ben Hania (Beauty and the Dogs), Nadine Labaki (Caramel), Moufida Tlatli (The Silences of the Palace).
