Budapest Architecture Film Days 2024

Text: Mária Tatai

This year, the Contemporary Architecture Centre’s film festival was organised by a team of designers with new members. I translated the catchy English slogan — People behind — in the title of the article as Human Stories, partly because in the last film of the festival, Balkrishna Doshi from India also refers to architecture as „storytelling”. It perhaps goes without saying that architecture stands for people, that it is at its core a defining dimension of our lives, but the festival has now turned its attention firmly to people. In addition to films about the process of building and construction, the people involved and the evolution of the man-made environment, there were recurring themes such as energy and climate issues and other attempts to protect our planet. This year’s festival also showed six films, each featuring a famous artist, including four by architects Álvaro Siza Vieira, Karl Schwanzer, Sigurd Lewerentz and Balkrishna Doshi, one by architectural photographer Gabriele Basilico and one by the universal artist György Kepes.