Moscow Square (Moszkva tér)

(2000, feature, 35mm, color, 88 minutes)
First feature

April 27th, 1989. It is Petya's 18th birthday and his friends gather in Budapest's Moscow Square to pop champagne and begin lengthy celebrations. May Day sees them swimming in the famous Hotel Gellert and breakfasting on Liberty Bridge, as the political clouds begin to lift and it seems youth and the country face a brave new future...

The release of Ferenc Török's debut Moscow Square  seemed to announce the arrival of a new sensibility in Hungarian cinema, one that corresponded to a generation that had entirely grown up in the post-communist era. It's April, 1989; Petya, Kiegler, Ságodi and their friends spend their evenings hanging around the clock tower in Moscow Square, while all around them the old regime is on the verge of collapse. Everyone feels that something is about to happen: the question is whether they make it happen or just wait for whatever's coming. For some like Petya and his girlfriend Zsófi, the new world means getting out of Hungary and getting to know the wide world. Few films have more effectively captured that sense of life on the eve a momentous political and social transformation - that unsettling combination of giddy optimism for the future and creeping fear of the unknown. Török cast his film largely with unknowns either from local high schools or the Academy of Drama.
(filmlinc.com)