An unusual romantic story from Cannes (The Nature of Love), a stunning documentary for film lovers (And the King said: What a Fantastic Machine!) and a multiple award winner from Karlovy Vary (‘Blaga’s Lessons’) are just some of the highlights of Tuesday.

In the chaotic days of the 1989 revolution, a police station in Sibiu is attacked, resulting in a bloody clash. Desperate to escape the siege, police captain Viorel is captured by the army and charged with terrorism. Tudor Giurgiu has already been at CineFest with his film Why Me? and now he is back with a powerful Hungarian co-production of a historical film, Libertate, which had its world premiere in Sarajevo and is now in the competition program.

The last screening of the film at the festival. Tickets for the screening are available for 1.000 HUF and are best purchased in advance.

Glória Halász’s film Circus Siblings, shown in the CineDocs competition program, stars members of a special Hungarian class of artists. They are given the opportunity to pursue international studies. Their journey, full of trials and unexpected turns, leads them to the Kiev Academy of Circus Arts. Through the relationship between the Hungarian students and their Ukrainian teachers, a bridge is built between the two cultures, as they and their peers forge a family and grow up.

The last screening of the film at the festival. Tickets for the screening are available for 1.000 HUF and are recommended to be purchased in advance.

In The Nature of Love, screened in the competition program, Sophia has been in a stable relationship with Xavier for ten years. When Sylvain, a handyman, is hired to renovate their new holiday home, her world is turned upside down and she finds herself in a passionate relationship with him. How will the manual worker be received in a metropolitan society where everything radiates superiority? This Canadian romantic film, with its subtle humor and eroticism, first swept audiences off their feet in the Cannes Un Certain Regard program.

Tickets for the screening are available for 1.000 HUF and should be purchased in advance.

What happens when humanity’s narcissism and the unfettered free market meet 45 billion cameras? Filmmakers Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck point their cameras directly at society, this time to discover, explain and expose how our unbridled obsession with the image has changed our behavior. From Camera Obscura and the Lumière brothers to YouTube and the world of social media, And the King Said: What a Fantastic Machine! uses only archival and found footage to show how we went from capturing the back garden to a multi-billion euro content industry in 200 years. The film is part of the CineDocs competition section.

Tickets for the screening are available for 1.000 HUF and should be purchased in advance.

The Ink is about the history, past, present and possible future of tattooing, and within it, of Hungarian tattooing, exploring how tattooing emerged from low culture to become an independent art form. The screening of the film, which is part of the CineDocs competition program.

The last screening of the film at the festival. Tickets for the screening are available for 1.000 HUF and are recommended to be purchased in advance.

Blaga is a seventy-year-old, recently widowed former teacher with strong moral principles. When phone scammers steal the money she has set aside for her husband’s grave, her moral compass slowly starts to spin out of control. Bulgarian Blaga’s Lessons won Best Film and Best Actress in Karlovy Vary and will now compete in the CineFest Competition section.

Tickets are available for 1.000 HUF and should be purchased in advance.

Barnabás Tóth returns to CineFest after the Oscar-nominated Those Who Remained. The director’s latest film, Master Game, is inspired by Stefan Zweig’s Chess Story, but the plot is set in 1956, on the last refugee train, creating a Hitchcockian tension. The film stars, among others, Gergely Váradi, Sára Varga-Járó, Károly Hajduk, Pál Mácsai and Bori Péterfy.

The last screening of the film at the festival. Tickets for the screening are available for 1.000 HUF and are best purchased in advance.

In partnership with the Hong Kong International Film Festival, CineFest presents six outstanding Hong Kong films as part of this year’s Open Eye program, one of which is The Sunny Side of the Street. In the film, a refugee boy is helped to escape Hong Kong by a local taxi driver. A father-son relationship develops between the two until the boy discovers that the taxi driver is actually his real father’s killer.

Tickets for the film are available for 1.000 HUF and should be purchased in advance.