Pal Zolnay Movies

Everyone around him thinks that Tamas (Károly Eperjes) is a little soft in the head, because he'd rather spend his time alone in the woods. He is a gentle man, who freely helps even the bullies who toy with him and mock him. In this drama, it seems that he is right to try to isolate himself, because when he gets involved with Hajnal (Zsuzsa Németh) a gypsy girl, she breaks his heart, steals his mother's life savings, and even comes back to seek his protection from another wronged lover, and his lot is one tragedy after another. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

When the director Marta Meszaros made her 1982 autobiographical feature Diary for My Children about her and her Hungarian family's sufferings in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, it made Hungary's authorities so nervous that they withheld it from distribution for two years. After seeing that it caused no problems for them, they okayed this movie, which is a sequel featuring the same actors in the same roles. The first movie concentrated on the experiences Juli (her name in the film) has under the Stalin regime and her eventual return in 1949 to Hungary following the imprisonment of her sculptor father and the death of her mother. In this movie, the girl has been having a difficult time with her foster mother, and at eighteen is trying to find some way to expand her horizons. She also wants to see her father, who she believes is still in a Soviet prison. Juli receives a scholarship to study film in Moscow, which is just what she was looking for. There, she encounters Janos, a man who resembles her father and she becomes friends with him, but he is later rounded up and imprisoned for political reasons. Meanwhile, Juli has been commuting between her Hungarian home and Moscow, studying for her film degree and making her first film, a documentary. When Stalin dies, there is a political thaw and Janos is released from prison, at the same time she discovers that her father died in prison in 1944, but his name and reputation had been rehabilitated (that is, they were no longer in official disfavor). When her movie is finally made and released (amid criticism that it is "brutally" honest), she is about to receive her degree in Moscow when she learns of an uprising at home. She wants to return, but the borders have been sealed. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Diary for My Children is set in Hungary during the turbulent years between 1943 and 1956. Jan Nowicki plays a dual role as the factory-worker friend of revolutionary journalist Anna Polony, and as the political-prisoner father of teen-aged heroine Zsusza Czinkoczi. It is Czinkoczi's involvement with both of the men played by Nowicki, which bridges the film's time-frame. Writer/director Marta Meszaros based the events of Diary for My Children on her own wartime experiences (her father was a Communist artist who died under mysterious circumstances during a Stalinist purge). The film was originally released in Hungary as Napló gyermekeimnek; it was the recipient of a Special Jury Prize at Cannes. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A young communist boy is abandoned by his partisans when he is hunted down by the Nazis. Hiding out at the home of a friend, he convinces him to join him in a terrorist attack. When the friend dies in the incident, love develops between the boy and his dead friend's sister. He finally decides to try and lead a normal life, but the Nazis discover him and hunt him down like an animal in this symbolic wartime tragedy. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Simon Istvan Iglodi is a 23-year-old student who travels back to his boyhood home during his vacation. When he arrives, he finds that everything he remembers about the town has changed. His friends have all left to find jobs in the city. His beloved Aunt Lina Manyi Kiss resents Simon because she feels he has abandoned the town just like all the other young people. The incident causes Simon to have flashbacks about all his childhood memories. The feature was shown at the 1967 Pecs Film Festival, with Manyi Kiss receiving the award for "Best Actress." ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi