The feature competition winner for Best Picture was a film called “Delta” by a young director, Kornél Mundruczó, which was also awarded the traditional Gene Moskowitz prize by the foreign press delegation. However, due to my unfortunately vast degree of geographical separation from the festival grounds I didn’t get to see it, and therefore am not in a position to comment critically one way or another. This year’s Best Director Prize went to Elemer Ragalyi, for the film “Nincs Kegye...

Budapest is a big city and on my current visit I was forced to find lodging quite far from the center. As a consequence of the long commute in and out of town I had to pass up many of the competition and other films scheduled, but still managed to meet many interesting people in the evening social gatherings at the Millenaris complex which has now become the nerve center of the annual film gathering. Below some comments on the "selling points" of a number of films I would like to have seen but w...

The opening night of the Hungarian film week at the Budapest Congress centre turned out to be more of a political than a cinematic event. "Rokoknok" (Relatives), the eagerly awaited new film by Hungary's leading filmmaker, Istvan Szabo -- his first Hungarian language film since 1992 -- was scheduled to open the festivities, but just a few days prior to the opening an article appeared in a prestigious literary magazine casting serious doubts upon director Szabo's past political integrity. To put ...