Nearly five hundred Hollywood filmmakers and other celebrities of Hungarian descent are listed on a wall unveiled on Thursday at Origo Studios in Budapest’s 15th district.
‘In the last decade, revenues in the Hungarian film industry have grown tenfold, reaching over 200 billion forints in 2022.
Budapest is the new film capital of Central Europe,
offering one of the highest tax incentives for film production in the world. The infrastructure is good, the workforce highly skilled, and since 2019, spending on foreign productions in Hungary has tripled,’ Deputy State Secretary for Youth at the Ministry of Culture and Innovation Zsófia Nagy-Vargha stated at the event.
As she put it, the recently held 96th Academy Awards also saw fantastic Hungarian successes: part of the filming of Poor Things, which won four awards, took place at Origo Studios. She added that it is a cause for joy that since its premiere in November, more than 300,000 tickets have been sold for Lajos Koltai’s film Semmelweis, and Now or Never, which premiered last week, was seen by 75,000 viewers during its opening weekend.
‘We can be proud that the Hungarian film industry is experiencing a great era. Since the success of Son of Saul,
we have made it onto the list of fifteen countries that have won the Oscar twice for Best Foreign Film,’
the Deputy State Secretary pointed out. She spoke about Hungary’s connection with Hollywood dating back to its beginnings, as two of the five largest Hollywood studios were founded by Hungarians.
President of the Hungarian Hollywood Council Balázs Bokor highlighted that there are about fifty places in Hungary and in Hungarian-inhabited areas beyond the borders where Hollywood filmmakers or actors were born or have ancestral roots. He mentioned that Adolph Zukor, an Oscar-winning producer, was born in Rics; William Fox, founder of Fox Film Corporation, was born in Tolcsva; Al Lichtman, a prominent figure at Universal, was from Monok; and Tony Curtis’s ancestors hailed from Mátészalka: they will hold a film festival in his honour this year.
‘The number of Hungarian Oscar wins has now reached 61,’ Bokor emphasized, referring to Robert Downey Jr, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Oppenheimer alongside Zsuzsa Mihalek, the set decorator for Poor Things, whose ancestors rest in the Jewish cemetery in Tata.
CEO of Origo Film Group Márta Horváthné Fekszi announced that Zsuzsa Mihalek will also receive a star at Origo.
At the event, attended by two Hungarian Oscar-winning directors, István Szabó and Ferenc Rofusz, as well as several members of parliament, representatives from twenty-five of the approximately fifty Hollywood-affiliated municipalities received trademark documents. Henceforth, they can bear the title of Hollywood’s Hungarian Roots Municipality.
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Sources: Hungarian Conservative/Origo/MTI
