A European wave

16/02/2006

With a very strong presence at the box office, the films from the Old Continent continue to dominate Hungarian screens this week, with today’s releases of films from the UK, France, Germany and Hungary: a European quartet that takes on a solitary US title. Leading the flotilla is Pumpheads (Kútfejek), which was screened at the recent Hungarian Film Week and directed by Iván Kapitány, one of the most promising directors of commercial Hungarian cinema. Produced by Filmservice with a budget of €675,000 (not a penny of which came from the state), this is the second feature from the maker of The Glass Tiger (Üvegtigris), an enormous success in 2001. The film follows the misadventures of eight characters (played by Ivan Feny, Károly Gesztesi, Péter Kálloy Molnár, Attila Kaszás, Roland Selmeczi, Mónika Ullmann, Orsolya Holecskó and György Dörner) who meet in a petrol station on the night of the World Cup Final.

German film Sophie Scholl [+see also:
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film profile] by Marc Rothemund (distributed by Best Classics) is one of this year’s nominees for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, while the cinema offerings from the UK and France, respectively, are Kirk Jones’ Nanny McPhee (UIP DunaFilm) and Sons Of The Wind (Les fils du vent) by Julien Seri (Best International).

As for the box office, István Szabó’s Relatives (see " target="_blank">news), distributed by Intercom, got off to an excellent start, reaching third place in its first week. Two notches down is fellow countryman Fonyó Gergely’s Tibor vagyok, de hódítani akarok (distributed by Hungaricom), now in its second week. Sitting in sixth place is UK director’s Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice [+see also:
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film profile] (UIP-Dunafilm), which is ahead of two big domestic titles: Üvegtigris 2 (eighth after four weeks in the theatres, see news) and the phenomenally successful Just Sex and Nothing Else (Csak szex és más semmi, see Hungarian Film Week feature ), which holds onto ninth place in its tenth week on the screens.