The best Koltai János’s movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Koltai János’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 Koltai János.
The Round-Up
7.5/10
Set in a detention camp in Hungary in 1869 at a time of guerilla campaigns against the ruling Austrians.
My Way Home
7.5/10
In the final days of World War II, a young Hungarian is making his way home, through countryside full of the debris of war, when he is captured and imprisoned by Russians. Left in the custody of a young Russian soldier, the two youths form a friendship in spite of not speaking each other's language.
Cold Days
7.9/10
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 responsibility, claiming that they were only following orders. The film is significant for its willingness to address the subject of Hungary's role in WWII, which was taboo at the time of the its release.
Silence and Cry
6.9/10
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. Due to the generosity of these women and a former childhood pal...
On Home Grounds
8.1/10
This ironic comedy is set in the god-forsaken Kiskúnbékás, at the end of the fifties. There are no jobs, the town's "golden team", who once were third class national soccer players have scattered
Judgement
6.3/10
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.
Dead Landscape
6.9/10
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 efforts to appreciate her situation, her despair grows. The loneliness is briefly interrupted when she and her husband take in an old woman and care for her, but the woman dies. Shortly after her son visits, she is killed in an accident which may have been a suicide. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
Late Season
7.5/10
Kerekes (Antal Pager) believes he is wanted by the police when his friends play a practical joke in this unusual comedy drama. He returns to his hometown where he was accused of turning a Jewish druggist and the druggist's wife over to the Nazis. With his friends following him, Kerekes tries to find out what became of the couple after they were deported. After being subjected to a mock trial by his friends -- and found guilty -- Kerekes becomes despondent and attempts to kill himself. Flashbacks and hallucinations are employed to tell this story that occurs during the Eichmann trial. Both the film and Antal Pager gained some unwanted publicity when a Variety article from April 23rd, 1967 accused Pager of being a Nazi collaborator for his role in an anti-Semitic film during World War II.
A múmia közbeszól
5.6/10
The Sack
6.9/10
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 is overwhelmed by his own memories, the death of his foster-father and by everything he was not aware of before, or he simply wanted to forget.
Lost Paradise
7.5/10
Sebők Zoltán, the brain surgeon, performed a secret abortion on his lover and the woman died. The man waiting for the autopsy (and his arrest) escapes to his father's villa at Lake Balaton.
Ten Thousand Days
7.4/10
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.
