And… ACTION 1 - Hungarian Hollywood: Budapest!

The star couple in Budapest

Over the last few years Hungary has became home to many international film productions. Two years ago, Angelina Jolie directed her first film in Budapest and a year after that, her husband filmed a zombie movie, called World War Z in Hungary. This summer, another american blockbuster, Die Hard 5 chose Budapest as it’s filming location.

I was wondering about what made Budapest such a tempting filming location in addition to the lower costs.  I thought that the lower price of filming a movie in Hungary could not be the only reason. Over the past few years,  Budapest has overtaken its biggest competitor Prague and other Central and Eastern Europe competitors in foreign film production.

The increasing popularity of Budapest is mostly due to the 20 % tax credit system which came into effect in 2004, the favorable forint exchange rate against the U.S. dollar and the euro, and the relatively cheap workforce. Hungarian film professionals have also become widely credited and are gaining the attention of foreign film-studios.

The diversity of architecture in Budapest is a huge advantage when it comes to filming in cities. The various buildings which have remained from the different eras of Hungarian history can portray almost  any large European cities. Thanks to it’s diversity in architecture, Budapest  can portray the former West and East-Berlin at the same time, and thanks to our architectural heritage of social realism; Budapest is also capable of imitating any of the cities from the former Soviet Union.

The aim is never to completely imitate the city where the story takes place, it would be almost impossible to do so, but to embody its atmosphere.  To do this, all they need is to find neutral streets with buildings from the right era that can fit the portrayed city’s atmosphere. 

Spy game - can you spot our synagogue :)? 

Although Budapest has already „played” Paris (Cyrano de Bergerac), London (Being Julia), Rome (Straight from the Heart), East Berlin (Spy Game), Berlin (The boy in the striped pyjamas), Moscow (Die Hard 5), Buenos Aires (Evita), or even New York (Hell Boy 2), a minor flaw is that Budapest has rarely had the opportunity to be itself on screen, which would be a good way of advertising the city. 

Hopefully someone will get inspired to shoot a story on our Lady Queen Danube soon enough!

Wanna shoot your own movie? Do it with budapestUNDERGUIDE - read more here.

Scene shot in Budapest from Evita

Bruce Willis shooting Die Hard 5 with ex colleague underguide Petra in the background :)

Anna Bödecs is a volunteer contributor to our blog.