LYON, France — As Hungary took center stage as country of honor at this year’s International Classic Film Market (MIFC) in Lyon, the spotlight fell on an institution that tells a remarkable story of cultural resurrection.
Without a national cinémathèque, the National Film Institute (NFI), along with the Film Archive and Filmlab, set about restoring, digitizing and sharing Hungary’s cinema. “When I took over in 2017, it started from scratch – it was a ruin,” György Raduly, director of the Hungarian National Film Archive, told Variety. “The most difficult part was to change the mindset. For 10 years there had been no development, no change, and people were really on the floor.”
Eight years on, Raduly says the system now functions like a “Rubik’s cube”: “It’s a perfect model. We work as a team to put together the picture,” he says, describing the tight collaboration between archive, lab and fund.
At a roundtable in Lyon titled An Inverted Model: Concrete Action to Promote Hungary’s Cinematographic Heritage, Raduly joined Viktoria Sovák Lelievre, director of the Filmlab, and Csaba Bereczki, director of international affairs and sales at the National Film Fund, to explain how the system has evolved – all three in fluent French.
“We choose the titles [to restore] not only according to their era but also their relevance today,” said Raduly.
Around 30 feature films are restored every year, from silent works to post-1989 titles – a selection based on the condition of the film materials, anniversaries or distributor interest.
Since 2017, the NFI has restored over 350 films and digitized hundreds more. Many are available on Filmio, the national streaming platform, and on a nationwide online catalogue for schools. The films are subtitled in English and the ambition, Bereczki said, is to reach audiences across Europe, even where distribution is weak.
Bereczki traced the origins of this integrated system to the reforms of 2011, when the Film Fund was established to consolidate a fragmented sector. The results now extend beyond restoration, said Bereczki: Filmio combines rights from the NFI catalogue’s pre-1990 films – whose rights are held by the Institute – with new releases whose producers opt in. “Our ambition is to make Hungarian films accessible globally, and ultimately to overcome geo-blocking,” he said.
For Sovák Lelievre – who emphasized that her team works both on heritage and fresh films – the lab is the heart of the system. “We manage the entire process from A to Z – photo-chemical and digital restoration, color correction, reverse scanning,” she said. “We’re in a fortunate position because the laboratory and the archive belong to the same institution. We can work closely together on selecting the best elements all along the restoration chain.”
She also stressed the importance of preserving analog originals: “Hungarian films are very, very well preserved.”
Hungary’s lack of a cinémathèque has forced creative solutions. The NFI partners with cinemas and schools to organize some 3,000 screenings a year and a subsidy scheme with the education ministry enables students to attend for a symbolic €1.5 ($1.75) – filling off-peak hours and turning screenings into classrooms.
For international exposure, festivals and partnerships play a key role. Restored films now screen in Cannes, Berlin or Annecy, while the Budapest Classics Film Marathon has grown into a landmark event. Running every year in September, the six-day festival screens over 120 films and scores tens of thousands of admissions.
Guests this year included David Cronenberg, István Szabó and producer Robert Lantos. “Film heritage plays this strange role as an intermediate medium between ages. It’s not our mission to promote contemporary film, but of course we open minds: When people see 125 years of Hungarian filmmaking, they realize it’s a filmmaking country,” said Raduly.
European cooperation has been essential. The recent restoration of “After Death” (“Un Revenant”) by Christian Jaque brought together Hungary, Belgium and France.
“The only surviving copy of this 1922 silent film was found in Belgium,” Raduly explained. “Because it’s based on a French novel by Gaston Leroux, we reached out to the Cinémathèque Française, and thanks to European funding, we made this beautiful cooperation possible.”
Hungary’s restorations have become tools of cultural diplomacy: they have screened at Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato, MoMA in New York and in Japan. “Every time we can show our newest restoration, we open a window to a filmmaker or a period – we are speaking about our film culture as a whole,” Raduly told Variety.
That visibility is paying off. “The invitation for Hungary to be Country of Honor at France’s Annecy Animation Festival this year was born from meetings at the Film Marathon,” Raduly said. “We started with film heritage, and it went far beyond – but the guiding light was always the heritage.”
Plans for a Budapest cinémathèque are now taking shape: a site has been found and plans are being drawn up. But final approval and funding remain political decisions. That progress is significant in a country where cultural institutions operate within a highly centralized system. Yet within that framework, the archive-lab-fund alliance has managed to thrive, focusing on preservation, education and access.
For Raduly, that mission runs deep. “Even in 1917 and 1918, Hungary was producing more than 100 feature films a year,” he said. “It’s in our DNA.”
The MIFC runs alongside the Lumiere Film Festivals in Lyon and wraps on Oct. 17.
After Death