It was announced last week that Hungary’s official nomination for the Best International Film category of the 2022 Academy Awards will be the yet-to-be-released political drama Blockade, by director Ádám Tősér and written by Norbert Köbli. The announcement was made on the Hungarian National Film Institute’s website, after the deliberations of the Hungarian Oscar Selection Committee, which included Péter Bergendy, the director who was nominated last year for his film Post Mortem.

The Film Institute offers the following synopsis: “A true story of the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Hungary, József Antall, from his freedom fighter days in 1956 to the infamous 1990 taxi blockade that shook the nation.

József Antall, only six months after his induction as Prime Minister of the first democratic government following the 1989 change of the Communist regime, faces the most difficult test of his life.

Taxi drivers protest against the drastic rise in petrol prices by the House of the National Assembly. Quickly disillusioned with democracy, they blockade the city of Budapest, and soon after the whole country. The opposition sides with them and prompt them to start a revolution. The reserved and thoughtful Antall goes head to head with the ever so popular President Árpád Göncz about how they think the situation can be resolved, and their personalities and opinions collide. Both the press and public opinion sympathize with the taxi drivers, and the police force abandons the government, now unpopular due to their disposition.

József Antall, former participant of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, finds himself on the other side of the barricade. Left alone, newly operated, in a hospital ward, he starts remembering his life as a young history teacher turned revolutionary, and the way he met his wife in the process.

Back in the present, Antall has to make a decision what he should do. He manages to use all the resources he possibly can without hurting the values of the systemic change that just happened in the country, and finds a solution.

Blockade is not only the chronicle of the four days of the taxi blockade: it shows the battles and bargains behind the scenes, and the private life of a Prime Minister dealing with crisis, fighting for democracy.”

Tősér’s last film was 2021’s well-received Kittenberger – The Last Hunt, about the famous Hungarian natural historian and biologist Kálmán Kittenberger. Blockade, which will be released in Hungary on October 20, looks to be both political and personal, not to mention riveting, as the below trailer evinces.

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