The Boys of Paul Street

A turf war erupts between two rival gangs of young boys in this adaptation of a classic Hungarian novel

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, this American-Hungarian co-production is adapted from one of the most well-known Hungarian works of literature. As in Ferenc Molnár’s 1906 youth novel of the same name, the Paul Street boys are forced to wage a pseudo-military campaign to defend their turf – an abandoned lumberyard in Budapest – from their older and bigger enemies.

Zoltán Fábri's favourite actress Mari Törőcsik, seen in his adored classic Merry-Go-Round 13 years earlier and in Károly Makk’s Love (1970), plays the mother of little Nemecsek (British child actor Anthony Kemp), who remains one of the most indelible – and instructive – characters in all of Hungarian fiction and film.