Children of Glory

Budapest, October 1956. Karcsi is the young star of the national water polo team and the only thing on his mind is the Melbourne Olympics. Then he goes to a demonstration at the university and meets Viki there. The demonstration turns into an uprising, the streets fill, and the Soviet tanks arrive. With the rising still going on, the team is taken out of the country and sent to Melbourne. The players read what is happening in the newspapers. In the semi-final they draw the Soviet Union, and that match turns into a reckoning in the water. Krisztina Goda directs the Hungarian film; a hundred and twenty-three minutes, with Iván Fenyő as Karcsi and Kata Dobó as Viki, and Andrew Vajna among the producers. The match it describes really happened: on 6 December 1956 Hungary beat the Soviet Union four to nil, and because of the blood in the pool that is how the game is remembered.