European Films

After dozens of premieres of shorts, documentaries and feature films, the 39th Hungarian Film Festival ended on Tuesday night with the awards ceremony. Arthouse favourite Kornél Mundruczó won the Grand Prize for his long-awaited big-budget film Delta. The movie originally started production in 2006, but after the lead actor's death and financial difficulties, filming restarted in 2007 with a new cast and new concept. According to jury president Klaus Eder, Delta is the most likely to have a good run at the international festival circuit. The film also won an award for Best Film Score. The big surprise hit was A nyomozó (The Investigator), the debut feature of Attila Gigor. The movie premiered to loud cheers and rave reviews and quickly became the frontrunner to win the Grand Prize, although the jury finally decided in favour of Delta. A nyomozó won a total of five awards: Best Actor (Zsolt Anger), Best Screenplay, Best Editor, the Youth Jury's Grand Prize and the USD 150,000 prize of TV2 for Best Commercial Film.

The young director's movie is already compared to the 2003 smash hit Kontroll, and is expected to have a big cult following in Hungary. The film tells the story of Tibor Malkáv, an anti-social prosector, who is in serious need for cash as his mother needs an expensive surgery. A stranger offers him money if he kills a man. Malkáv does the job, but he finds out that the victim is his never-before-known half-brother. The loner anti-hero starts to investigate and finds other surprises throughout the darkly comic journey.

Benedek Fliegauf's Tejút (Milky Way) was also a strong contender having already won last year's Locarno's experimental Filmmakers of the Present competition. However, Tejút only won an award for Special Jury Prize and a shared prize in the Best Cinematography category. Gergely Pohárnok was one of Tejút's two DOPs - his award is mostly to salute his amazing job in Fövenyóra (aka Pescani, a Serbian-Hungarian co-production, based on the novels of Danilo Kis, directed by Szabolcs Tolnai).

TV-Host and funnyman Attila Till also debuted as a film director with Pánik (Panic), and to a little surprise, the film won the Best Actress award (for Ági Gubik) and the Audience Award. Another nice success is Béla Paczolay's Kalandorok (Adventurers), which is a three-generation comic road-movie. Although Paczolay has a long and successful resume with directing commercials, Kalandorok is his first feature film - he won the Sándor Simó Award for Best Debut Film.

Probably the biggest surprise of the night was Elemér Ragályi's Best Director award. His film Nincs kegyelem (Without Mercy), which tells the true story of a wrongfully convicted Gypsy man, was originally released as a TV movie back in 2006.

The international jury was headed by Klaus Eder; the other members were János Kende, Krisztina Goda, István Márta  and Catherine Portuges.