The Hungarian film industry closed a historic year in 2025, with productions supported by the National Film Institute (NFI) surpassing both 2 billion forints in cinema revenues and one million admissions, according to figures released by the institute on Thursday.
NFI-backed Hungarian films generated 2.282 billion forints at the domestic box office, while 1,069,254 viewers bought tickets between 1 January and 14 December, nearly double the audience recorded a year earlier. Filmmakers also collected more than 50 major awards at international festivals, underlining the growing global recognition of Hungarian cinema.
One of the standout successes was the romantic drama How Could I Live Without You?, released last December, which broke a four-decade attendance record. More than one million people saw the film in Hungarian cinemas, and it has remained on screens for 53 consecutive weeks. Screenings beyond Hungary’s borders, in Transylvania, Slovakia and Serbia’s Vojvodina region, attracted almost another 200,000 viewers.
According to Csaba Káel, Government Commissioner for the Hungarian film industry and president of the NFI, the greatest achievement of 2025 was that audiences returned to cinemas and rediscovered Hungarian films. He also noted that the historical TV series Hunyadi set viewership records on television.
Produced through European cooperation, Hunyadi became the most-watched television series of the year in Hungary, averaging around one million viewers per episode. Since its March premiere, the series has been successfully screened in ten countries, from Slovakia and Israel to Germany and Canada, across TV channels, streaming platforms and festivals.
Among feature films, Nóra Lakos’s I Accidentally Wrote a Book became the most successful Hungarian youth film since the political transition, drawing more than 160,000 cinema-goers at home and winning 30 awards worldwide. The film was also nominated for the European Film Academy’s Young Audience Award, a first for a Hungarian production.
At the Venice Film Festival, László Nemes’s Orphan and Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend both competed in the official selection. Silent Friend went on to win six awards, including the FIPRESCI prize for best competition film, and has since received numerous international accolades.
Hungarian productions also performed strongly on streaming platforms, with titles such as I Accidentally Wrote a Book and the comedy Tonight We Kill topping viewing charts after their digital premieres.
In 2025, eleven NFI-supported feature films and 37 television productions premiered, ranging from documentaries and portrait films to animated series. The institute provided production support to 69 projects in total, allocating more than 13 billion forints for script development, production, distribution, festival participation and film events.
Looking ahead, the NFI said the strong support base will ensure a steady flow of new Hungarian films in 2026, including historical dramas, documentaries, comedies and sequels to some of this year’s biggest hits.
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