The finest of Hungarian film art in France

The Liszt Institute Paris showcases the finest of Hungarian cinema in France. At the end of April, a press conference announced that Hungary will be the guest of honor at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, organized by the National Film Institute and the Liszt Institute. The Institute also continued its highly successful retrospective film series, which has been paying tribute to the work of Zoltán Fábri since last autumn. French audiences also had the opportunity to watch two more outstanding examples of Hungary’s remarkable film output: Ildikó Enyedi’s On Body and Soul, and the animated classic Cat City by Béla Ternovszky and József Nepp. Screenings of Hungarian films have been met with great success across France.

On April 23, a press conference for the Annecy International Animation Film Festival was held at the French National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC). Hungary will be the guest of honor at the festival, which begins on June 8, 2025, in celebration of the 111th anniversary of Hungarian animation. Hungary’s participation is the result of a collaboration between the National Film Institute and the Liszt Institute Paris. The press conference was opened by the festival’s Artistic Director, Marcel Jean, followed by CEO Mickaël Marin, who presented this year’s program. The festival will offer audiences an opportunity to discover the creators, studios, classics, and emerging talents of the Hungarian animation industry. At the festival’s film market, MIFA, the Hungarian booth will welcome international participants with a series of professional events and programs. Áron Gauder, a multiple Annecy award-winning animation director, will serve as the patron of the MIFA Campus. Hungary’s participation will be further enriched by four exhibitions, a street art project, and a DOME installation in collaboration with the House of Hungarian Music. As part of the retrospective program, 61 restored classics of Hungarian animation will be screened, and a dedicated exhibition will highlight the works of Sándor Reisenbüchler and József Gémes. The festival has also invited three Hungarian professionals to serve on its juries: Nadja Andrasev will join the Contrechamp jury, Réka Bucsi will serve on the graduation film jury, and György Ráduly will sit on the official feature film jury.

For several years, the Liszt Institute Paris has been organizing its annual retrospective film series at an external venue—Reflet Médicis, one of the most popular cinemas in the Latin Quarter. Held in close collaboration with the National Film Institute, the screenings take place once a month, typically on the first Monday of each month. In the 2023–2024 season, the series featured the films of Márta Mészáros, while starting in autumn 2024, the program will pay tribute to Zoltán Fábri. Functioning as a kind of film club, each screening is introduced by film expert Joël Chapron, who also leads the discussion following the film. The series has enjoyed tremendous success, drawing an audience of around 70 to 80 viewers each month. As part of the retrospective launched in autumn 2024, four films were screened that year, followed by five more in 2025 to date: The Paul Street Boys, The ant hill, 141 Minutes from the Unfinished Sentence, The Fifth Seal, and Hungarians. The current season will conclude on June 2 with a screening of Requiem. Starting in autumn 2025, the Liszt Institute Paris will continue its acclaimed film series with a retrospective dedicated to István Szabó.

As part of the thematic series "Animals in Film," the Liszt Institute Paris organized a screening of Ildikó Enyedi’s On Body and Soul at the Carreau du Temple cultural center on April 29. The film was introduced to an audience of around sixty attendees by Marylin Phelipot, program curator at the Carreau du Temple. Following the screening, Ildikó Enyedi gave a brief talk about the film and engaged in an hour-long Q&A session with the audience.

Ternovszky Béla and József Nepp’s 1986 animated classic Cat City is considered one of the greatest achievements in Hungarian animation. Thanks to Extralucide Films and in collaboration with the Liszt Institute Paris, the film was screened with French dubbing for the first time on May 5 at Inalco, offering French audiences a new way to experience the iconic production. Following the screening, a discussion was held with Zoltán Maros, the character designer of Cat City. The event was also a special occasion to mark the upcoming departure of Ildikó Lőrinszky, who has served as the Hungarian lector at Inalco since 2019 and will conclude her tenure in Paris in the summer of 2025.