The top ten best Hungarian movies of the 2010s – Videos

After many years of stagnation, the Hungarian movie industry finally seems to have found itself again. A new generation of directors and excellent producers brought back colour and excitement into Hungarian movies and showed their vision to the public with great success. Some of these films even received worldwide recognition and won many awards abroad.

Kafkadesk collected the top ten best Hungarian movies which helped the rebirth of the country’s movie-making process.

Liza, the Fox-Fairy (2015)

This new-generation movie tells the story of a cursed servant (played by Mónika Balsai, a rising Hungarian actress) in a fictionalised, quirky ’60s Budapest setting. All men who fall in love with Liza suddenly die by the hands of the ghost of a Japanese singer. This movie is a weird merge of Hungarian humour and Japanese folk stories, resulting in a heartfelt comedy with a sweet love story in its centre. It also has a cameo by legendary Hungarian actress Piroska Molnár. This film was one of the first signs of the revival of Hungarian cinema.

For Some Inexplicable Reason (2014)

This movie depicts a few months in the life of a mildly depressed post-breakup Áron in his late 20s, who, after graduating from university, is not doing anything with his life. Often going for a simple home video look, this film about a Hungarian millennial depicts some uniquely generational and regional problems. Therefore, it is no surprise it mostly won awards at film festivals in the region, such as in Karlovy Vary and Sofia. This movie is considered to be one of the best Hungarian films made in the 2010s.

Strangled (2016)

In the early sixties, Péter Kovács committed a series of the most hideous crimes in Hungarian history. Kovács raped and murdered four women between 1957 and 1967. During the investigation, the police faced pressure from the state to find the perpetrator as soon as possible, as it was perceived impossible that a serial killer could run free in the safe haven that was Communist Hungary. This exciting and unique Hungarian thriller is also a must for movie lovers.

Sunset (2018)

This is the second production of Academy Award-winner László Nemes. The story follows Írisz Leiter, who returns to her family’s hat saloon in 1913 in the hope of continuing the family’s business. The movie tries to answer a question that strongly resonates with our present times: how could a society living in the most prosperous era of European history fall into the catastrophic abyss of the First World War? His answer is unexpected, clever, and painfully true.

One Day (2018)

At first glance, there are few more boring subject materials for a film than an average day in the life of a middle-class mother. Luckily, that did not stop the director from doing a film with this exact premise. Each muscle-tick on the actress’s face conveys all the emotions of a post-financial crisis lower-middle-class Hungarian parent could ever feel. One Day is a beautiful ode to the mothers who work the hardest yet are appreciated the least.