A young, revolutionary couple aboard the last train leaving Budapest after the Russian invasion of 1956. Based on a novel by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig.
33-years old Tamás Merthner is heartbroken, after his girlfriend Anna, who is on a scholarship in Paris, breaks up with him. While wallowing in self-pity, Tamás takes a trip down memory lane to figure out if love only exists when it's practically gone. As he's trying to pick up the pieces, he begins to realize what makes this current society so confused, which gives us a highly subjective view of Hungary's present.
Day in and day out, lovers Cynthia and Evelyn enact an elaborate sadomasochistic fantasy as mistress and maid. But as their ritual of domination and submission begins to turn stale, Cynthia yearns for something more conventional, while Evelyn tries to push their taboos even further.
In the 1970s, a British sound technician is brought to Italy to work on the sound effects for a gruesome horror film. His nightmarish task slowly takes over his psyche, driving him to confront his own past.
Concerning the Mátyás era in Hungarian history, during the reign of Matthias Corvinus (1443–1490), the film focuses on three eras of the king's life: the young Mátyás fights for the throne, the older Mátyás as king, and the fate of the royal crown and the royal heir after his death.
Some wounds never heal. In a rundown Central European town, the everyday lives of three working people are violently disrupted: a boy goes missing, a woman is stalked, and a man comes face to face with the killer of his child.
At 15 he and his family became victims of state terror. At 16 he became a freedom fighter to participate in the 1956 Revolution against Soviet oppression. At 17 he is betrayed and arrested by the dreaded Secret Police (AVH). Now he has to spend the remainder of his life in a political prison, called Hell's Hallway, to reach the legal age of 18 before his death penalty can be carried out. Peter Mansfeld was 18 when he was unjustly executed by the totalitarian regime of Hungary. Today he is remembered as one of the national heroes of Hungary.