Ettinauer226XL's Favourite Central European Films
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- DirectorBéla TarrÁgnes HranitzkyStarsLars RudolphPeter FitzHanna SchygullaA naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.
- DirectorKarel ZemanStarsMilos KopeckýRudolf JelínekJana BrejchováThe outrageous Baron Munchausen tells of his many adventures, from meeting the Man in the Moon to defeating a Turkish army all by himself.
- DirectorKarel ZemanStarsLubor TokosArnost NavrátilMiroslav HolubAn evil millionaire named Artigas plans to use a super-explosive device to conquer the world from his headquarters inside an enormous volcano.
- DirectorJózsef GémesStarsAdrienne CsengeryGyula SzabóThe tragic medieval tale of a man of inhuman strength, fierce temper and a desire for noble knighthood. While on the run as a murderer, he finds new life as a knight, only to face disillusionment, the horrors of war and ugly human vices.
- DirectorJuraj HerzStarsZdena StudenkováVlastimil HarapesVáclav VoskaIn this gothic rendition of the classic fairy tale, a merchant's youngest daughter is held prisoner by a mysterious winged beast.
- DirectorBéla TarrÁgnes HranitzkyStarsJános DerzsiErika BókMihály KormosA rural farmer is forced to confront the mortality of his faithful horse.
- DirectorKrzysztof ZanussiStarsStanislaw LatalloMonika Dzienisiewicz-OlbrychskaMalgorzata PritulakTabloid life of a physicist; his work, his love life and his quest for the meaning beyond.
- DirectorIldikó EnyediStarsDorota SegdaOleg YankovskiyPaulus MankerTwo twin sisters, who grew up separately, Dóra, a pseudo-aristocrat, and Lili, an anarchist bomber, are reunited through Z, a mysterious traveller of the luxurious Orient-Express.
- DirectorJan SvankmajerStarsPetr MeisselGabriela WilhelmováBarbora HrzánováSix people unknowingly form a cycle of masturbation as they each cause others to privately indulge in their fetishes.
- DirectorGyörgy FehérStarsPéter HaumannJános DerzsiJudit PogányWhen a schoolgirl is found murdered in the woods, a retiring detective tries to find her murderer.
- DirectorGyörgy FehérStarsIldikó BánságiDjoko RosicJános DerzsiIn this black-and-white Hungarian version of James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, a wife and her lover plot to kill her older husband.
- DirectorBéla TarrStarsMihály VigPutyi HorváthLászló feLugossyOn the eve of a large payment, residents of a collapsing collective farm see their plans turn into desolation when they discover that Irimiás, a former co-worker who they thought was dead, is returning to the community.
- DirectorKrzysztof KieslowskiStarsZbigniew ZamachowskiJulie DelpyJanusz GajosAfter his wife divorces him, a Polish immigrant plots to get even with her.
- DirectorMartin FricStarsKarel HaslerOscar MarionSuzanne MarwilleThe old organist unwittingly witnessed the suicide of an unknown man. Before his death, he handed him an envelope with money for his daughter Klara, who lived in the monastery. The organist did not report the case to the authorities, but hid the suicide's corpse in the cellar. Little did he know that he was being followed by his unscrupulous neighbor, a shoe shiner, who then blackmailed him with the threat of a murder charge.
- DirectorMiklós JancsóStarsKrystyna MikolajewskaMikhail KozakovTatyana KonyukhovaDuring the Russian Civil War, the Red Army - aided by Hungarian Communists - and the White Army fight for control of the area surrounding the Volga.
- DirectorJerzy KawalerowiczStarsLucyna WinnickaLeon NiemczykTeresa SzmigielównaJerzy enters a train set for the Baltic coast. He seems to be on the run from something - as does the strange woman with whom he must share a sleeping compartment.
- DirectorJirí SvobodaStarsPetr BruknerRadoslav BrzobohatýVáclav BurkertA surreal look at madness in a brooding Czech countryside mansion.
- DirectorBéla TarrStarsMiklós Székely B.Vali KerekesGyula PauerA lonely barfly falls in love with a married bar singer.
- DirectorJirí BartaStarsFrantisek HusákZdenek MartínekIvan VojtekA sarcastic story about a thief who becomes the victim of his own victims. His victims come from the other world and take his most precious possession - his blood. The phantasmal atmosphere of the film is achieved through artificial animation coloring in a motion picture.
- DirectorJanusz MorgensternStarsZbigniew CybulskiTeresa TuszynskaGrazyna MuszynskaJacek is a handsome young Pole who belongs to a drama company. One day, in the streets of Gdansk, he meets Marguerite, a beautiful daughter of the French consul, and immediately falls for her.
- DirectorOldrich LipskýStarsKarel FialaRudolf DeylMilos KopeckýStraight shooting Lemonade Joe cleans up Stetson City, in this musical parody of early Westerns, after shooting the pants off villain Old Pistol. Joe's endorsement of Kolaloka lemonade as the refresher that assures deadly aim, convinces the Arizona sin-town to abstain from alcohol. But Trigger Whiskey maker Duke Badman's brother the devious gunslinger Hogofogo, comes to save his sibling's saloon from Joe's allies, father and daughter temperance revivalists, the Goodmans. Based on famous Czech parody novel from the 1940s and its various stage adaptations.
- DirectorMilos FormanStarsJan VostrcilJosef SebánekJosef ValnohaA volunteer fire department throws a party for their former boss with the whole town invited, but nothing goes as planned.
- DirectorDrahomíra VihanováIt's morning. A man goes with his horse into the wood to start today's work. The Kriz family has a long tradition of working with horses, but now he is the only one who still does it. He loved horses already as a child, he has worked with horses for 35 years, and he will stick to horses until he dies. He has a horsey relationship, which means that he doesn't need the reins, but just tells the horse what to do and how to move. Horses are sensible, and he treats them like human beings. If the horse gets a lousy lunch service, he will start lacking zest for the work. The horse should be taught things on a regular basis, as when there is a time to begin and a set time to finish. It's important for the horse to get a fancy harness, so he looks like a proper horse and not as a vagrant. It has always been a specialty of the Kriz family to make a good horse out of a bad one. To destroy a horse is a cardinal sin. The Kriz family always treats the horses as members of the family.
- DirectorJan SvankmajerStarsVáclav HelsusKlára IssováZuzana KrónerováThe film uses a mix of cut-out animation from photographs and live-action segments, and tells the story of a married man who lives a double life in his dreams, where he is married to another woman.
- DirectorStanislaw RózewiczStarsHenryk HryniewiczBeata BarszczewskaAndrzej BanaszewskiThree episodes dealing with the harsh situation of children at the time of war. They stay at orphanages, wait for their parents to come back, help the soldiers, hide in the forests and do their best to survive.
- DirectorMárta MészárosStarsKatalin BerekGyöngyvér VighPéter FriedA lonely middle-aged woman wants to give birth to a child, but her acquaintance with dysfunctional teenagers leads her to the idea of adoption.
- DirectorEduard GrecnerStarsRadovan LukavskýGustáv ValachEmília VásáryováThis is a ballad about love, hate, and a search for a way out of loneliness. It is a dramatic story about the strange potter, Martin Lepis, nicknamed Dragon, who is suspected by the villagers as the cause of natural disasters. He loses his beloved, his home, and his freedom due to false accusations. After years he returns to his native village. Putting his own life to risk, he saves a herd of cattle from a forest fire in the hills. But not even this heroic deed helps him to win back the friendship of the locals.
- DirectorZoltán HuszárikFrom time immemorial, man has enjoyed the horse in all manners, as an art object, a speed racer, a cart-puller, and in circus acts. Cars are taking the horses' place in transportation, and horses are being slaughtered for meat. Will men hear the whinnying of the horses again?
- DirectorKrzysztof KieslowskiStarsJerzy StuhrMalgorzata ZabkowskaEwa PokasAn ordinary factory worker buys a camera on the occasion of the birth of his child. The authorities order him to make documentaries about the factory's success. But his endeavor to be truthful leads him to opposition against censorship.
- DirectorJerzy SkolimowskiStarsVincent GalloEmmanuelle SeignerZach CohenAn Afghan POW attempts his escape.
- DirectorDrahomíra VihanováStarsJulian DiazFrantisek RauchS.N. MunyuaFati Farari, a black man from Africa, is completing his studies in classical piano at the Music Academy of Prague. It's the day before his first solo concert, where he is going to play Bach. While he strolls around the city he is thinking, not so much about the concert as about himself, both as a lonely foreigner and as a human being in cosmos. Here and there he encounters some racist comments, but mostly he just feels the weight of social exclusion because of his otherness, especially when it comes to women. On the morning of the day for his concert the embassy informs him that his whole family has perished. He feels totally broken, although he thinks that everyone holds some pain inside. His piano teacher, a professor at the Academy, looks him up, and tells him that he heard what has happened. The professor advises him to communicate his feelings that evening by using his Bach.
- DirectorJirí MenzelStarsRudolf HrusínskýJaromír HanzlíkJosef SomrThis movie is based on texts of Bohumil Hrabal, world-known Czech prosaic. It's a story (in a form of a mosaic of short episodes and pictures) about the sadness and happiness of inhabitants of Kersko (Kersko is a small woody area full of cottages and roods). These people are both simple and sensitive, they have their own pleasures (e.g. Leli is a collector of cheap, but inutile things) and the greatest delight of all of them is a hunting. Crude poetics of amateur hunting is screened by dreamy pictures of this area. Menzel mixes sentimental lyricism and rough (but not vulgar!) humor and the outcome is the never-ending landscape of continuous life in the proximate nearness of nature. The performances of actors are brilliant. Both Rudolf Hrusinsky as a Franz and Jaromír Hanzlik as a Leli have nonrecurring charm bottomed on a pain and inebriation. Only the music is not perfect: Jiri Sust usually assembled his film music from his older works and in this movie there is many quotations.
- DirectorKrzysztof KieslowskiStarsIrène JacobWladyslaw KowalskiHalina GryglaszewskaTwo parallel stories about two identical women; one living in Poland, the other in France. They don't know each other, but their lives are nevertheless profoundly connected.
- DirectorMarcell JankovicsStarsGyörgy CserhalmiVera PapGyula SzabóIn this dreamlike Hungarian folk myth, a horse goddess gives birth to three powerful brothers who set out into the Underworld to save three princesses from three evil dragons and reclaim their ancestors' lost kingdom.
- DirectorJan NemecStarsLadislav JánskyAntonín KumberaIlse BischofovaTwo Jewish boys escape from a train transporting them from one concentration camp to another. The film goes beyond the themes of war and anti-Nazism and concerns itself with man's struggle to preserve human dignity.
- DirectorKrzysztof KieslowskiStarsGrazyna SzapolowskaOlaf LubaszenkoStefania IwinskaA naive inexperienced young man spies on a woman who lives across the courtyard, and falls in love with her. He starts using tricks which he hopes will lead to them meeting.
- DirectorKrzysztof ZanussiStarsTadeusz BradeckiZofia MrozowskaMalgorzata ZajaczkowskaA young man is facing death of his mother. A petty corruption at his job leads to him being framed and robbed of his only desire to climb mountains in Himalayas, as his father did and where he died.
- DirectorWojciech WiszniewskiStarsJan HimilsbachAdolf HitlerJózef PilsudskiThe film is reminiscent of "Gosciminska" by virtue of both analogy and a reversal. Both films are based on a written text - a colloquially worded document written and read out by the protagonist, which initially takes form of curriculum vitae, but as it progresses begins to sound more like a letter of complaint. The protagonist's account spans from the pre-war to the post-war period. What is reversed is the relationship accounts and the film footage illustrating them. The unique method of editing archive material is particularly worthy of note. As each take is replayed a number of times the footage looses its credibility.
- DirectorKrzysztof KieslowskiStarsMiroslaw BakaKrzysztof GlobiszJan TesarzA soon-to-be lawyer crosses his path with a taxi driver and a young sinister man.
- DirectorPawel PawlikowskiStarsAgata KuleszaAgata TrzebuchowskaDawid OgrodnikA novice nun about to take her vows uncovers a family secret dating back to the German occupation.
- DirectorJindrich PolákStarsPetr KostkaJirí SovákVladimír MensíkJan is a decent, boring man, living a decent, boring life as a rocket designer. When his adventurous twin brother dies in a breakfast accident, Jan decides to impersonate him, unwittingly becoming a part of a Nazi time travel conspiracy.
- DirectorJaromil JiresStarsJaroslava SchallerováHelena AnýzováPetr KoprivaSurreal tale in which love, fear, sex, and religion merge into one fantastic world. Based on a classical Czech novel of the same title.
- DirectorGábor BódyStarsPatricia AdrianiUdo KierGyörgy CserhalmiNarcissus and Psyche is based on a novel by Sandor Weores. Borrowing the character of Psyche from mythology and placing her in Europe in the 19th century, the authors give her a "modern" life. She is an attractive young woman - and remains so throughout the film, in spite of one hardship after another. Psyche is libidinous, and her prurient interests shock her staid contemporaries.
- DirectorBéla TarrÁgnes HranitzkyStarsMiroslav KrobotTilda SwintonErika BókAfter witnessing a crime during his night shift as railway switchman near the docks, a man finds a briefcase full of money. While he and his family step up their living standards, others start looking for the disappeared case.
- DirectorGustav MachatýStarsKarel SchleichertIta RinaOlaf FjordA young woman is seduced and abandoned by a man who was invited to stay at his home by her father in a stormy night. Noticing that she is pregnant, the girl decides to leave home and start a new life.
- DirectorDusan HanákPictures of the Old World is an unquestioned masterpiece of European documentary cinema, with existential radicalism that offers a contrast to the shallowness of hundreds of other documentary films showing images from the outskirts of civilization. The outskirts here are a Slovakian town in the Tatra Mountains. Though censored for 17 years, Dusan Hanáks poetic visual essay is not a political or even social film. It goes to far deeper and more fundamental levels of human experience. Inspired by the photographs of Martin Martinek, the films power lies in its unusual portraits of people whose raw visual beauty radiates from their very souls. Some, like the village cosmos aficionado or the disabled old man who climbs stairs on his knees, are hard to forget.
- DirectorTadeusz KonwickiStarsAndrzej LapickiGustaw HoloubekMaja KomorowskaMiddle-aged Andrzej takes a dreamlike journey to his troubled past, trying to understand his friend's suicide.
- DirectorJuliusz MachulskiStarsWieslaw MichnikowskiJerzy StuhrOlgierd LukaszewiczTwo scientists are placed into a 3-year hibernation, but when they wake up, it turns out to have been 50 years, and they are the only two males in a new underground society composed exclusively of women.
- DirectorKároly MakkStarsLili DarvasMari TörőcsikIván DarvasThe wife of a political prisoner tends to her mother-in-law and keeps from the old woman the truth about her son, whom she believes is in New York making a film.
- DirectorHenryk SzaroStarsGregori ChmaraAgnes KuckJulian KrzewinskiJournalist Henryk Bielecki is not very talented but he desperately wants to become a famous writer. Nothing will stop him from making his dreams come true.
- DirectorJirí TrnkaA delicate and secluded ceramist sees his orderly life turn upside down, when a gigantic hand in a white glove invades his space, demanding that a sculpture of itself is made. When will the hand's obstinate demands stop?
- DirectorGustav MachatýStarsLadislav H. StrunaMagda MaderovaJirina SejbalováMána is a young secretary. One evening she and her roommate accompany two wealthy older gentlemen to dinner. After one of them offers money to her she realizes his intentions and flees from the restaurant in shock. She later meets a man named Karel in a nearby café. They spend the night wandering the rainy streets of Prague and the two quickly develop strong feelings for each other.
- DirectorMárta MészárosStarsZsuzsa CzinkócziÁgnes CsereAnna PolonyHaving lost her parents to Stalin's purges, a girl returns from Soviet Union to her native Hungary to live with her Stalinist aunt.
- DirectorDrahomíra VihanováStarsFranz EimannThe farmer Franz Eimann is born in 1905 in the small village Gründle in the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia. He lives in peace with his Czech neighbors, but life changes when the Nazis invades and occupies the country. As a German he is called to the front in 1943. Fortunately he is too old to serve as a fighting soldier, and never kills anyone. At the end of the war he spends three years in prison in England. After his release he tries to go home, but the authorities in Czechoslovakia don't allow him to return until 1956 because of his ethnicity. When he returns he hasn't seen his wife and daughters for 13 years. After the war all properties belonging to the German-speaking population are confiscated and turned over to the Czechs, including his little farm. Many of German ethnicity have to dig their own graves before being shot down. In 1958 Eimann succeeds to buy a new cottage, where he now lives as a widower, 86 years old. Besides taking care of his few animals, he spends his days worshiping God, who saved him through all the horrors. He goes to the mass in the village church. At home he prays to God in front of a small altar in a little chapel of his own.
- DirectorWojciech HasStarsZbigniew CybulskiIga CembrzynskaElzbieta CzyzewskaUpon finding a book that relates his grandfather's story, an officer ventures through Spain meeting a wide array of characters, most of whom have a story of their own to tell.
- DirectorJirí BartaLaid-off old mannequins spend their cracked and broken lives in an old, abandoned warehouse. New mannequins are brought to the warehouse. They are old as well, but from a younger generation. The two groups must live together, but it's not easy at all.
- DirectorJan SvankmajerThree surreal depictions of failures of communication that occur on all levels of human society.
- DirectorKarel ZemanStarsMagda VásáryováEmil HorváthFrantisek FilipovskýWhen a comet passes the earth very closely, it pulls a small part of North Africa with it. Carried along is a bunch of people. Among them Angelika, who just escaped from a ruthless weapon dealer's ship, and her two brothers, who are searching her. Then there's a group of natives, who plan a rebellion against the French colonists. All these conflicts become secondary when the people finally realize that they are doomed to live together on an alien planet. However this time of peace and world-happiness won't last for long...
- DirectorJan SvankmajerStarsLudvík SvábBedrich GlaserJan KrausExamines the human relationship with food by showing breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
- DirectorJan SvankmajerA human body gradually reconstructs itself as its various component parts crowd themselves into a small room and eventually, after much experimentation, sort out which part goes where.
- DirectorJán KadárElmar KlosStarsIda KaminskaJozef KronerFrantisek ZvaríkA carpenter in the Fascist Slovak State is appointed "Aryan controller" of a Jewish widow's store.
- DirectorJirí BartaCycles of life, with fantasy elements. An ax splits wood. Bits of split wood move in stop-motion; one piece has a woman's face near the top. Water streams in torrents; patches of snow give way to spring. A large black bird flies into the frame. It attacks and splinters the wood with the woman's face. The piece of wood, whole again, becomes the bird's body. It flies about, and it's celebrated by other bits of wood. Then, a man leaves a house carrying an empty pail. He gathers bits of wood. A chimney smokes.
- DirectorZoltán FábriStarsLajos ÖzeLászló MárkusFerenc BenczeIn Budapest in 1944, a watchmaker, a book seller and a carpenter are drinking in a bar with the owner, when they are joined by a stranger. The watchmaker asks a hypothetical question that will change their lives.