István Sztankay

Májusi fagy

The movie tells about the relationship between young people who love each other. Young Mishka's family works on a construction site in Budapest, and on weekends they come home to their village on the Great Plain to relax and have fun. It is here that the young man meets Klari. He learns that Klari is his fellow villager, although she also works in Budapest. They arrange to meet the following weekend. Mishka is truly in love. Clarie is too, but she doesn't dare to admit to him that she has been unfaithful.

The Martyrdom of St. John

Story of a young teacher starting to work in rural Hungary

Dragon and Slippers

Queen Guinevere sadly complains to her beloved handmaiden Peggy that her husband, King Arthur, has neglected her for years. The King spends all his time on the platform of the knight's tower or at the famous 'round table'. The women figure that only the good old wizard Merlin can help. Merlin sends Guinevere a powerful magic potion that will help her win back Arthur's love. The ladies bake the potion into a pudding, but it is accidentally eaten by Arthur's favorite knight, Lancelot. To complicate matters, Peggy is in love with Lancelot, but the knight's overdose of magic causes him to fall madly in love with the queen.

Rolling on the Road Roller

Józsi, a sailor who once traveled the world, dock worker and stable boy lives in the small village of Nyírmadocsa. From here he sets out to find a road roller for his small village, so that at last there will be a real road in the village. When Józsi, far from his beloved homeland, gets the engine, he sets off on an adventurous journey, roaring through Hungary towards his small reseda smelling village.

Másfél millió

Mihai Toth worked for forty years as a watchman in a timber warehouse. On his last watch, there was a fire: the warehouse burned to the ground. The damage amounted to one and a half million forints. It was a terrible blow to Mihai, who had worked honestly all his life. Suddenly it turns out that Mihai has won one and a half million forints in a lottery. Wanting to save his good name, he wants to deposit this sum in the state treasury. But it turned out to be not so easy: the cause of the fire has not been established and Mihai's guilt has not been proved. That's why nobody had the right to take money from him. For a long time Mihai wandered from one institution to another with a request to accept money from him, but everything was in vain. Then the old man tried a trick...

Twenty Hours

A crusading newspaper reporter covers the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Initially critical of the communists, the feature later espouses the virtues of the social changes implemented since the invasion. The title refers to the period of time the reporter spent interviewing witnesses to the invasion.

A Cloudless Vacation

Péter and Pál, two notorious skirt hunters competing in wooing Oana, a pretty Romanian girl on the beach at Tihany. A couple of days later the girl gets a telegram saying that she has to leave for Bucharest immediately. The party - which has increased with Piri, the interpreter, and Ági, the hitch-hiker - gets to a Romanian village by Peter's ramshackle car, a 1921 Colymne. The car, however, breaks down.

Villa Negra

A past world is revived in the little cottage in the outskirts, next to the housing blocks under construction. Tamburás, the old hobo collects swerved youth: Diák, who desires freedom, the bus driver who is deprived of his license for having run over someone, and the rest. They have got an easy and unbound life there, with constant music, small thefts, occasional labour, tricks.

Dialogue

The film depicts the period between 1945-60 through the life of a communist couple. Barna Judit, just released from a concentration camp and Horváth László, with an illegal past are brought together by the communist movement. They study and make plans together in the hope of a future that will make sense. The marriage they just entered, however, gets ruined soon by the events of history.

The Fake "Isabella"

Végh Márta, the teacher is looking for her student Vadász Ica in the Buda villa, but she only finds the tenant, Mrs. Paár - dead. The investigation reveals that Mrs. Paár was murdered for an invaluable stamp, the "Fake Isabella".

Miss Windbag

Éva, the pretty housekeeper is preparing to take an entrance exam at the Faculty of Law. In addition to this, she also has energy to arrange the day-to-day matters of the committee of tenants. Soon, she discovers that her beauty and cocksure behaviour finds its way not only at the exam, but in the mazes of bureaucracy, too. She helps get trade licences, flat allocations, and shop premises for those in need.

Gréti...! (egy kutya feljegyzései)

Gréti, a German shepherd, searches for her missing puppy.

Return Ticket

Five old men and a kid are travelling in a train's cabin without purpose. They travel because it's free and they don't have another place to stay. From their conversations we learn the tragedies of their lives. Also the hidden interlockings of their faith will out slowly.

A hiba nem az almában van

The relationship between a man and a woman is an evergreen subject, the subject of countless tragedies and comedies. This programme tells hilarious stories, most of which are very much of today, but which go back to the Garden of Eden: if men had not written the story of creation, would Eve have been the cause of the "Fall"? The debate is indecisive, since women and men always look for the fault in each other and not in themselves. The fault is never in the "apple". And Adam and Eve always eat the apple together.

The Master Criminal

Lohmann's son is kidnapped. The un-known kidnappers get a thirty-thousand-jewel from the West German millionaire as ransom. The eager police lieutenant-colonel, Gálffy finds that the traces lead to a mysterious, elegant blonde, who is naturally a brunette.

Do You Know Sunday-Monday?

Juli is a 17-year-old student who takes a summer job in a local chemical factory. She is befriended by Piri, a girl with an unsavory reputation who has worked there before. The two friends are ogled by male workers who have overactive libidos and imaginations. Juli spurns the advances of a deluded Romeo while Piri continues to work and endure open hostility from the older female workers while her slothful parents sink deeper into alcoholism.

On Home Grounds

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

Palm Sunday

Epic recalling the early days of the Republic of the councils.

Tales of a Long Journey

On the crowded train, the workers entertain each other by telling stories.

A Galant Story

The story of Bálint Balassi, the poet and warrior. The scene is Hungary at the end of the 16th century. The soldiers stationed at the castles of Hungary's border defence-system spend their days with anti-Turkish raids, hunting and womanising.

The Land of Promise

At the beginning of the 50s, Jani, the young pitman, goes to work to a new mine. To his disappointment, he is only employed as a trammer. After lengthy disputes he manages to get to the post he desires.

A Bright Star at the Stake

This film takes place in Paris and Geneva in the 1530s and 1550s. Kálvin János and Szervét Mihály are school mates in Paris. The university students celebrate the victory of the Reformation with Kálvin's "Institution", written under a pseudonym.

A Window on the Sky

Mrs. Fazekas and her three sons live in a tenement house in the outskirts. The eldest son, Fecó, is saving money in order to buy a washing machine for his mother, while her other two sons spend time by hanging around and playing tricks.

Férfiarckép

A grey-haired man walks through the fields. Fatigued, but with the same tenacity he roams the roads, the pathways, the tracks every day, medical bag in hand. Everyone awaits him: desperate or in hope, to the dying or to the woman in labour. He is the local GP. In fact, he is film director Imre Gyöngyössy’s father, the protagonist of one of his first short films. The personal narration based on the director’s poem is made complete by the pictures of Sándor Sára and István Gaál who were also active at Balázs Béla Studio at that time.

Így írtok ti

Karinthy's best-known and most popular work to date is So You Write. It was this work that made him famous, and it was with this work that he had his first real, great success. The most popular characters of the series of caricatures, which was formed by café games and mockery of his peers, are quoted with the greatest figures of the Hungarian theatre.