Gloomy Sunday

Gloomy Sunday

Budapest in the thirties. The restaurant owner Laszlo hires the pianist András to play in his restaurant. Both men fall in love with the beautiful waitress Ilona who inspires András to his only composition. His song of Gloomy Sunday is, at first, loved and then feared, for its melancholic melody triggers off a chain of suicides. The fragile balance of the erotic ménage à trois is sent off kilter when the German Hans goes and falls in love with Ilona as well.

"A remarkable movie! A throwback to classics like 'Casablanca'." - Chicago Tribune  

"A coup de théatre that is as daring as it is satisfying." - Los Angeles Times

Festivals: Mar del Plata IFF, Hong Kong Jewish IFF

Laszlo Szabo and IIona Varnai run a restaurant which becomes famous due to a song. "GLOOMY SUNDAY" opens the heart of its listeners, but the melancholy within also skirts along the darkest depth.
The young house pianist Andras composed the ballad for IIona - out of love. But IIona's heart throbs for both men - for Andras and for Laszlo. A triangular relationship develops between them in which all of them find their happiness, more or less, until the German Hans Eberhard Wieck falls entirely under the spell of the song, and for IIona's beauty as well. He even proposes marriage to her, but she turns him down.

A few years later Hans returns as an SS officer to Budapest which meanwhile has been occupied by the Germans. A man with power to decide over life and death. A man who threatens to destroy the fragile balance between IIona and her two men...