The best Erika Bodnár’s movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Erika Bodnár’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Erika Bodnár.
White God
6.8/10
Favoring pedigree dogs, a new regulation puts a severe tax on mixed breeds. Owners dump their dogs and shelters become overcrowded. 13-year-old Lili fights desperately to protect her pet Hagen, but her father eventually sets the dog free on the streets. Hagen and his master search desperately for each other until Lili loses faith. Struggling to survive, homeless Hagen realizes that not everyone is a dog’s best friend. Hagen joins a gang of stray dogs, but is soon captured and sent to the pound. With little hope inside there, the dogs will seize an opportunity to escape and revolt against mankind. Their revenge will be merciless. Lili may be the only one who can halt this unexpected war between man and dog.
Autumn Almanac
7.2/10
In this dense setting, the inhabitants of a large, claustrophobic apartment reveal their darkest secrets, fears, obsessions and hostilities.
Daughter of Darkness
5.1/10
An atmospheric, sub-hallucinogenic venture into the world of the unknown. The enigma facing a young woman is the identity of her father. Unfortunately for her, she becomes drawn into a small Romanian underworld of brooding menace, darkness, torture chambers, and bizarrely over make-over'ed vampires. The moody undertones and well chosen locations are certainly a bonus, as is the comically funny finale.
Tabló
5.3/10
Karcsi, a Roma policeman, lives with Eva, a Swede. One day he is called to the scene of the murder of a wealthy trafficker named Schulter. He begins to investigate the crime, interrogate neighbours and suspects, and untangle a complex situation - one that he, himself, complicates even further. For he is a gypsy, who despite being adopted and raised by "regular" Hungarians, has his nose rubbed in his minority status every day. The film, which is based on the novel by Ákos Kertész, is a shrewd genre work full of dusky humour and surreal situations. Tabló follows a vivid succession of strange images that eventually lead to the emergence of the central story about a charismatic police officer on a tireless quest for the truth, though he must fight against virtually everyone and is just as fallible as the next person. Tabló makes a statement on the issue of race and racism - or, indeed, relations between any minority and majority.
The Alchemist and the Virgin
5.8/10
Parallel Faces
6/10
This sensitive and ironic film points up two girl-faces: Vera is happy, but cold, while Borika is tired, but warm-hearted.
Death in Shallow Water
6/10
1991, farewell in Budapest. Mária remembers the past in tears. Her husband, Tibor, a chemist and a target of the KGB, left their apartment one evening to fetch some cigarettes only to be found drowned in the shallow Lake Balaton the following day. Their son, Peter, a student in Western-Europe, was found dead on the Danube embankment.
When Time Began
The film takes place at the end of 1946. Rumours are spread that the food supply will not arrive for it has been robbed. Workers of the metal factory go on strike.
Be Tough, Victor
Győző is a 38-year-old insurance agent. At a playground, he gets acquainted with the 40 year old Gábor, left by his wife, and with a career as an opera singer in pieces.
Chickenhead
It is a tragedy, set among low-lifes on the outskirts of Budapest. Dramatic Exchange describes it as "Widely considered to be the most important Hungarian play of the last 20 years". The odd title of the play refers in the first instance to the chicken heads that an old woman feeds to her cat. However, it can also be taken to refer more broadly to the obtuse behaviour of the main characters in the play. The play is an odd mixture of pathos and nihilism, written against the bleak background of Stalinist totalitarianism from which Hungary was emerging. As with much modern drama, there is no hero in the play. The only noble behaviour that one can find belongs to one of the characters in the past, when he was a child, but he is no longer as he was. The hint that what once existed might be achieved again is the only faint ray of hope in a very bleak view of the human condition.
