East Side Stories hits screens as viewers await Hungary 2011

by Fabien Lemercier

18/11/2011 - Winner of the Best Actress Award (for Tünde Bacskó - pictured) at the latest Hungarian Film Week, East Side Stories was launched yesterday in Hungarian theatres by Vertigo Média. Produced by Unio Film, the feature is divided into four parts directed by Csaba Bollók (Iska's Journey), Ferenc Török (Overnight [trailer]), Márk Bodzsár and Szabolcs Hajdu (White Palms, Bibliothèque Pascal [trailer, film focus]).

Entitled The Wild Side, the section directed by Hajdu has a cast including Andi Vasluianu, Orsolya Török-Illyés, Lujza Hajdu, Tünde Bacskó and Illés Nyitrai. The film centres on a Romanian man who emigrated to Hungary ten years ago, got married there and started a family. But instead of a promised land, he has found only a miserable, jobless life fuelled by alcohol.

Bollók’s The Sunny Side stars Csilla Radnay, Péter Telekes, Tamás Herczeg, Valentin Venczel and Emina Elor. This love story through time centres on Gavro and Gina who have been given the chance by the deus ex machina to live in three different eras: at the start of the 19th century, at the height of communism and in the present day.

Bodzsár’s The Other Side centres on the encounter between two men at the swimming pool. A complicity develops over the days until one of them realises that the other is just a lowly employee in the company where they both work. The cast includes Roland Rába, Zsolt Trill and Judit Rezes.

Featuring, among others, Mari Csomós, Dezső Garas, Ervin Nagy, Anita Tóth and Zoltán Durkó, Török’s The Flip Side traces the misadventures of an old woman who goes to the post office to return an obsolete telephone.

Still running at half-speed, Hungarian film production currently seems to be finding an outlet in collective works because Béla Tarr has just produced Hungary 2011, which brings together 10 five-minute-long shorts directed, notably, by Benedek Fliegauf, Miklós Jancsó, András Jeles, Ágnes Kocsis, György Pálfi, András Salamon, László Siroki, Simon Szabó and Török again.

(Translated from French)