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Chickenhead poster
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Chickenhead

1986 Movie Drama

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.

Same cast & genre

24 Shares actors and at least one genre with this title
Portugal poster
FILM

The film takes place in a present-day small Hungarian village in the middle of nowhere. Strangers hardly ever come to this place, everything outside of it seems to be in another world for the inhabitants. But one day everything changes, when a stranger from Budapest enters the pub. He is on his way to a vacation in Portugal and wants to spend some days in this village. He soon starts a love affair with the pub owner's daughter. The ex-policeman of the village doesn't like this at all...

Portugal

2000 Drama
Minden szerdán poster
FILM

Stephen, living in a troubled family, breaks into a grocery store and wreaks vandalism. He is sent to a reform school. Later he works in a cleaning brigade and accidentally meets József Draskóczi, who denounced him. Draskóczi lives in an unloving, troubled atmosphere with his barren daughter and cynical son-in-law, ascetic about his youthful communist beliefs. He feels responsible for Istvan's fate, offering him a human voice and love. Despite his daughter's hysterical jealousy, he sends Istvan to school and then, through his previous connections, provides him with an apartment...

Minden szerdán

1979 Drama
Sleepless Years poster
FILM

The "sleepless years" in this propaganda piece by director Felix Marlassy occur on Csepel Island, an island south of Budapest that is home to an armaments factory. The factory workers are shown being exploited by imperialists, capitalists gone berserk, and fascists, more or less in that exact chronological sequence. The heavy-handed approach does much to undercut the belief that when socialism finally takes over, the lives of the workers are brought up to a human level. In this instance, audiences might prefer a more nuanced and subtle statement, no matter what the message.

Sleepless Years

1959 Drama
The Trumpeter poster
FILM

In the late 17th century, Hungary moved from Turkish to Austrian domination, becoming a key part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In this story, which takes place shortly after that time, three outlaws murder a group of people on their way to a wedding. One young man was a slave travelling with the group to entertain them with his skills as a trumpeter. The outlaws spare him for the same reason. He allows himself to believe that they are really an unattached group of independence-fighters, but after seeing their brutal and callous ways, he cannot believe that they are good men, and he turns them in to the authorities. At that point, he is unnerved to discover how nobly they bear the rigors of captivity. ~

The Trumpeter

1979 Drama
Freytág testvérek poster
FILM

Few writers today tackle sweeping, multigenerational family sagas, work that demands vast life experience and insight. József Attila Prize–winner Árpád Thiery has done just that: his two published volumes of the Freytág Siblings’ story (1943 through the late 1960s) have been adapted by Hungarian Television into a five-part series slated for January 1989, and he’s already completed the trilogy’s final installment. Thiery describes it as a historical family novel, tracing postwar Hungary, from the Stalinist 1950s and the 1956 uprising’s aftermath to the upheavals of 1968, while celebrating freedom, truth, hope, boundless faith and innocent responsibility.

Freytág testvérek

1989 Drama
The Alchemist and the Virgin poster
FILM

The story is set in the present day. László Sziráki, a womanizer and chemistry professor, is searching for the secret of making gold, but one component is missing. He wants fame and a solution to his financial problems. When he meets Esthena, an eccentric philosopher who wants to lose her virginity, he succeeds in turning plastic into gold. But he, a shrewish and shrewd man, does not recognise the exceptional nature of this encounter and pushes her away. Sophika, the wise grandmother of Syracuse, also meets Esthena: she sees her as a kindred spirit and assigns her to her grandson. But in the meantime, Mr. Maci, Esthéna's bumfordian and buffalo-loving gladiator knight, who will do anything for the girl, begins to pursue the alchemist out of jealousy. Will Syracuse find the answer to the alchemist's question? And is making gold even important?

The Alchemist and the Virgin

1998 Drama
Tabló poster
FILM

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.

Tabló

2008 Crime
Meteo poster
6.8 FILM

Eckermann (Laszlo Kistamas) is a listless computer whiz who spends most of his time lounging in a bathtub holding imaginary conversations with cartoon characters usually more popular with children than grownups. He has some friends who want to use his skills to steal some money from a local gambling joint. He works out a scheme for his friends and returns to his tub. At some point along the way, he is joined in the water by a lovely Czech refugee, who (perhaps inadvertently) makes it possible for him to die there.

Meteo

1990 Science Fiction

Closely Ranked

10 Ranked across franchise, crew, cast, themes, genre, era and audience scores
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds poster
98% match FILM

Middle-aged widow Beatrice Hunsdorfer and her daughters Ruth and Matilda are struggling to survive in a society they barely understand. Beatrice dreams of opening an elegant tea room but does not have the wherewithal to achieve her lofty goal. Epileptic Ruth is a rebellious adolescent, while shy but highly intelligent and idealistic Matilda seeks solace in her pets and school projects, including one designed to show how small amounts of radium affect marigolds.

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds

★ 7.3 1972 Drama

Viewers also picked

A revizor poster
85% match FILM

The corrupt leaders of a small rural town learn that an auditor is coming from St Petersburg. Frightened, they try to put things in order. Hlesztakov, a Petersburg official, has been starving for days in his inn in the small town, having gambled away all his money and no credit. In a misunderstanding and a bit of backstabbing, the town's corrupt leaders mistake him for an auditor. The bureau chiefs are watching his every move, and the mayor's daughter is a hit. When he leaves, the whole town celebrates and expects him back for a wedding. But a letter reveals the fraud, and at the same time the real auditor arrives.

A revizor

1989 Drama

Shares 2 cast members · Same director

Übü király poster
85% match FILM

The Empty King created a mythical figure and a whole world from grotesque, archetypal images. The drama was originally conceived as a student tirade against a teacher at Jarry's school, the Lyceum of Rennes. This teacher, Hébert, was the target of public ridicule. In 1888, at the age of 15, Jarry wrote a puppet play about the exploits of the Woolly Tartar and staged it to the amusement of his friends. The figure of Übü is a crude, cruel caricature of the foolish, selfish bourgeoisie as seen through the unrelenting gaze of a schoolboy; but this Rabelaisian figure, in all his falstaffian greed and cowardice, is more than a mere social satire. It is a terrifying picture of man's animal nature, his evil and cruelty. The Katona József Theatre in Budapest premiered Jarry's play in 1984, and it ran continuously for more than 10 years.

Übü király

1989 Drama

Shares a lead actor · Same director