Best Hungarian war movies

In the horror of 1944 Auschwitz, a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people finds moral survival trying to save from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son, seeking to give him a proper jewish burial.

A hardened mercenary in the Foreign Legion begins to find his own humanity when confronted with atrocities during the fighting in Bosnia.

In 1944 Budapest, one of a group of four friends poses a hypothetical moral question to the others, an act that will unexpectedly alter their lives forever.

In 1919, Hungarian Communists aid the Bolsheviks' defeat of Czarists, the Whites. Near the Volga, a monastery and a field hospital are held by one side and then the other.

Shortly after the end of World War II, a con man on the run finds himself in a passionate love affair that may well cost him his life.

Sibiu, December 1989. In the chaos and panic generated by the protests of the crowd against the authorities, a unit of the militia becomes the target of a violent assault that escalates into a bloody confrontation between soldiers, militiamen, security agents, and civilians. Trying to escape the siege, Captain Viorel of the militia is captured and accused of being a terrorist.

After the failure of the Kossuth's revolution of 1848, people suspected of supporting the revolution are sent to prison camps. Years later, partisans led by outlaw Sándor Rózsa still run rampant. Although the authorities do not know the identities of the partisans, they round up suspects and try to root them out by any means necessary.

In the aftermath of World War II, a Hungarian teenager, captured by Soviet troops, forms an unlikely bond with a Russian soldier in a remote prison camp.

The Toth family resides in Northern Hungary. The couple has a daughter and a son, the latter a member of the armed forces. When his weary major is ordered to take a vacation, the son talks him into a visit to his family home. Comedy ensues when the Toths go overboard trying to make things pleasant for the visiting major in hopes of an easier life for their son the soldier.

World War II, occupied Soviet Union. István Semetka is a simple Hungarian farmer who serves as a Sub-Lieutenant in a special unit scouting for partisan groups. On their way to a remote village, his company falls under enemy fire. As the commander is killed, Semetka has to overcome his fears and take command of the unit as he is dragged into a chaos that he cannot control.

This romantic and grandiose historical film depicts the era of the constant incursions and heroic battles fought by the defenders of the castle of Eger, led by captain István Dobó, against the heavy odds of superior numbers through the lives and love of Bornemissza Gergely and Cecey Éva. Gergely is inaugurated as a fighter already at the age of 7, when he escapes the captivity of the half-eyed Turk, Jumurdzsak, with Vica and the war-booty. In thirty years' time he becomes the first assistant of captain Dobó and the brain of the castle in the defence of Eger.

During World War I, an Austrian-Hungarian-Romanian reconnaissance team embarks on a treacherous mission beyond enemy lines to destroy an Italian post.

Set in the 1890s on the Hungarian plains, a group of farm workers go on strike in which they face harsh reprisals and the reality of revolt, oppression, morality and violence.

To celebrate Hitler's birthday, a soccer match is organised between the Germans and a group of Hungarian political prisoners, one of whom is a famous pre-war football star.

A young, revolutionary couple aboard the last train leaving Budapest after the Russian invasion of 1956. Based on a novel by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig.

István Pongrácz, lord of the castle of Nedec, is a strange man. He does not like his own time, so he imagines himself as a medieval lord of the castle. His surroundings also accept his whimsy, and in this way they give him a horse to ride. Like centuries before, he launches a campaign against the disobedient city of Banská Štiavnica. In their great embarrassment, the serious city fathers offer the haughty warlord a 'hostage': Apolka, the city's orphan. Her presence changes Count Pongrácz, who grows fond of the beautiful and innocent creature. But Apolka's heart belongs to another.

The main character, Eszter Tóth, raped by five Russian soldiers in Transcarpathia in 1944 , gives birth to a baby : the bastard of the devil. The story shows the vibrations of the wounded soul of a woman under the pressure of history.

The untold story of a Jewish baby who was born in the death camp before the liberation and survived. An extraordinary journey of the second and third generation, breaking the cycle of trauma to free themselves from Auschwitz - forever.

The film tells the story of a regiment of Hungarian hussars stationed in Poland. The hussars, mostly ordinary men, have heard news of the uprising and wish to return to the homeland to defend the newly independent country. The Empire, on the other hand, is firmly resolved that all Hungarian troops in the imperial army should be kept as far away from the trouble spot as possible, knowing that most soldiers would be loyal to Budapest rather than Vienna.

The 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.

The adventures of a young man as he moves from the Latin-American revolutions in the sixties and seventies, through Hungary in the eighties, to the Croatian war in 1991.

End of 1942, Ukraine, eastern front. The Private Lombos (Gábor Makray), a soldier loyal to his homeland, whose only desire as a freshman is to see his young wife again, serves here. However, due to an administrative error, he misses the train heading home. He thinks it can’t get any worse, but the real hell only begins. Educated young teacher, who speaks 3 languages, desperately fulfills his duty, takes up arms again, and marches on the Eastern Front. He is wounded in an attack and survives the night behind enemy lines in a pit. This is when he meets a mysterious old man (Tamás Varga), and this meeting changes everything. The old man's words shake his unbroken faith in his military family and homeland. At dawn, Russian soldiers find them, and Lombos is captured and then caught among the “tramplers”. The old man then also appears among the enemy's ranks, walks in the shadows, and tries to keep the young soldier alive at all costs with his advice.

Jani (24) lives in a small town in Western Ukraine in the Hungarian minority. He is an only child and his father died five years ago. He is fed up with the boring life in his town and drowning in the love of Erzsike (45), his mother. He gets his draft-call from the Ukrainian National Guard, to fight the separatist. He could sneak out of the country to escape the military service just like his fellows did, but instead he chooses to go to the war 1,500 km away – why? He is not a patriot. He is not even Ukrainian. Combining visuals of cinema verité and mobile footage of war, Jani’s coming-of-age story unfolds throughout the nine months of military service and a few months after discharge.

This film, set at the beginning of the 17th century, is the first East-European "Eastern". Bocskai István orders the free Heyducks to shepherd a huge herd of cattle through the country torn to three parts, to the Dalmatian coast, where he can get weapons in exchange, for fighting the Austrians.

Andras Kovacs' film, considered one of the most important Hungarian films of the 1960s, centers around four men who await trial for their involvement in the massacre of several thousand Jewish and Serbian people of Novi Sad in 1942. Each denies any responsibility, claiming that they were only following orders. The film is significant for its willingness to address the subject of Hungary's role in WWII, which was taboo at the time of the its release.

In the final days of the American Civil War, an emigre Hungarian military officer attempts to map the situation of the enemy. Many veterans of the 1848 War of Independence in Hungary fought on the northern side. Experienced Fiala, Boldogh who struggles with homesickness and the reckless Vereczky all experience their enforced emigration in different ways and news of impending peace elicits different reactions from them all.

At Christmas Eve in 1944 the runaway Pintér and Gozsó get through the Soviet blockade around Budapest. Pintér intends to hide in a flat abandoned by his own relatives, but he finds his relatives called the Turnovszkys, who are hiding the Jewish Jutka as well. Love unfolds between Zoltán and Jutka.

Story of the owners (Mastroianni and Schygulla) of a fancy nightclub in Budapest before and during WWII.

A boy is forced to face the hardships of war alone.

Film about the Holocaust. A Jewish family is allowed to keep the flat they have always lived in and to live a relatively normal life. One day their 10-year old son disappears. He has been sent to a deportation camp which seems like paradise except that the inmates are being used for medical experiments.

During World War II Carlotta, the circus owner maintains herself, her lover and her rather run-down circus-team by illegal man-smuggling. In the year of 1944, besides the usual refugees, she even has to take Professor Máté, the renown mathematician to the Yugoslavian partisans. The team is joined by Carlotta's psychotic son who has escaped from an asylum.

Allegory of the suppression of the 1919 revolution and the advent of fascism in Hungary; in the countryside, a unit of the revolutionary army spares the life of father Vargha, a fanatical priest. He comes back and leads massacres. A new force, represented by Feher, apparently avenges the people, but only to impose a different, more refined and effective kind of repression.

Main character of AZ ÖRVÉNY is cameraman György Petö. His private films shot before and during World War II document his family, and particularly his girlfriend and later wife Eva Lengyel. With hindsight, these films, mainly recorded in the southern Hungarian city of Szeged, make up an extremely wry historical document. Petö was a Jew. Slowly but gradually we notice how the anti-Jewish laws and political revolutions in Hungary take the family in a stranglehold. AZ ÖRVÉNY is a rhapsody of found footage. Skillfully edited and complemented with additional footage, it produces an account of an atrocious era and a plea for human dignity.

The Monarchy leads a repressive campaign against a Serb village, where an Austrian officer was killed.

A young man spends his last three nights with his lover before his army regiment is ordered to war. When he deserts his unit to return to her side, he discovers the woman he loves is gone, and he is interrogated by the police when he learns his lover is a communist agent. The two finally are reunited at the police station where the embarrassed man denies ever knowing the accused woman.

The film consists of 3 novellas. 1. On the eve of the Soviet advance into Hungary, workers at a military plant risk everything to strike in defiance, displaying unwavering courage and solidarity. 2. During a fierce battle, three Soviet soldiers shelter in a peasant’s hut where a dying mother begs them to baptize her newborn - an act of compassion they fulfill, leaving behind three stars from their caps as a lasting gift. 3. After liberating a Hungarian town, Soviet troops rescue a hidden throng of civilians, huddled in underground tunnels, from imminent Nazi brutality, saving countless lives in the process.

The movie addresses the anti-fascist theme taken from a moral perspective. The movie tells the story of a group of teenagers who were drafted to the front in the last weeks of World War II and found refuge on a small island.

1943. French POWs escape through Hungary towards the Balkan. Jacques and Gérard are caught and taken to an internment camp at Lake Balaton. Jacques meets Klári here, who was abandoned by her military officer husband for her Jewish origin. Both want to have a short affair, but love unfolds between them.

1944. At the end of the war ensign Bojtár gets from the captivity of the partisans into that of the Hungarian Nazi and he escapes at the price of a quasi-murder. He has to hide, the more so because his victim did not die and searches for him.

Even without a clock, the watch-maker of the small country town always knows the exact time to the second, and for this reason he came to be called Mr. Clock. His wife left him, and he only lives for his work. He is just engaged in repairing the tower clock when his wife returns and the German troops appear.

This film of three parts recalls memories from World War II. The titles of the parts are: Impartially, Terrified and Like a scream.