From Budapest to Lyon: Hungary steals the spotlight at the birthplace of cinema

At the renowned Lumière Film Festival in Lyon – the birthplace of cinema – Hungary took centre stage. The international audience discovered a story that could be described as a cultural rebirth: in just a few years, Hungary’s film heritage has become one of Europe’s most successful restoration and preservation programmes.

István Szabó in the spotlight

In 2025, Oscar-winning Hungarian director István Szabó was the main focus at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon. The event celebrated his remarkable body of work with screenings of three restored films – Father (1966), Mephisto (1981) and Being Julia (2004) – all presented in pristine quality for an international audience.

Alongside the screenings, Szabó gave a masterclass, while the National Film Institute (NFI) took part in a professional programme titled “An Inverted Model – Concrete Actions to Promote Hungary’s Film Heritage”. Panellists György Ráduly, Viktória Sovák Lelievre and Csaba Bereczki outlined the NFI’s new preservation and distribution strategies.

“This is an enormous honour and once again a great opportunity for Hungarian film heritage to receive wide international attention,”
said György Ráduly, Director of the NFI’s Film Preservation and Technology Division.

• Budapest International Film Festival kicks off this week

The new system that saved Hungary’s film heritage

When the National Film Institute took over the National Film Archive in 2017, the situation was bleak.

“For ten years, nothing really happened, and people had lost motivation,” recalled György Ráduly.

The turnaround came when the Archive, Filmlabor, and the film fund were merged into a single, complementary system.

“Today it’s like a Rubik’s Cube – every piece fits where it belongs,” said Ráduly.

The collaboration enables the restoration of around thirty feature films each year, ranging from silent classics to post-1989 titles. Beyond technical criteria, the team also considers each film’s cultural relevance and its resonance with contemporary audiences.