The Whiskey Bandit

Attila Ambrus comes into Hungary from Transylvania as an illegal, crossing the border strapped underneath a train. In Budapest there is nowhere to stay, no work and no money. He gets in at a hockey club as a goalkeeper, but the team does not pay wages. That is why he robs the first bank. The rest become a habit: between 1993 and 1999 he takes more than twenty-seven banks and post offices, in a different disguise each time, and never shoots anyone. Because he drank before a job, the press named him the Whisky Robber, and the country treated him as a folk hero rather than a criminal. That is what interests the film: how little standing the police and the state had in nineties Hungary explains why a robber was loved. Nimrod Antal wrote and directed. Bence Szalay plays Ambrus. The story is true: Ambrus was eventually caught, and in Hungary he is still compared to Sandor Rozsa, the country's own version of Robin Hood. It premiered at the Warsaw Film Festival on 16 October 2017 and opened in Hungary on 22 November. Who it is for: anyone who likes heist films drawn from real events and Eastern European cinema. Who it is not for: anyone wanting critical distance. The film loves its hero too much, the robberies start repeating, and the victims are barely present.