While the organizers are preparing for Europe’s largest fireworks display for the Hungarian national holiday on 20 August, public television is prepping for a line-up of historical dramas and documentaries for the occasion.
Hungarians are celebrating the establishment of their state in 1000 AD by Saint King Stephen I on the day.
The 1996 historical drama The Conquest (Honfoglalás) by director Gábor Koltay is about the Magyar tribes settling into the Carpathian base in the late 9th century AD. It will be playing from 8:35 pm on M5, the cultural channel of Hungarian public television. The Rise of the Árpáds (Az Árpádok felemelkedése), an educational film released in 2023, richly illustrated with mise-en-scènes with actors in historical costumes, will be shown for the first time on 20 August on the same channel. The House of Árpáds was the first ruling dynasty on the Hungarian throne, ruling between 1000 and 1301.
M5 will be ending its programming for the day on 20 August with another film from Gábor Koltay, his 2001 historical drama Sacra Corona about the establishment of the Hungarian state.
Meanwhile, from 9:30 pm, the major commercial TV channel TV2 will be showing the recently released, big-budget historical drama Now or Never! (Most vagy soha!) about a different, but equally significant time in Hungarian history, the 1848–1849 Revolution and War of Independence against the Habsburgs.
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