Personal Belongings

I was fortunate enough to see this film on the big screen before it started making the festival circuit and it blew me away.

I've been a serious film buff for most of my life and when you see a personal movie like this it reinvigorates your belief in humanity and the power of the moving image.

The director Steve Bognar set out to film his father's return to Hungary, a country he chose to leave when the Russians rolled in to take over in 1955.

Steve's father Bela had not been back and he wanted to see the old country and his family since the iron curtain had fallen.

Their home movies became this film, documenting not only a trip down memory lane but facing some unresolved personal issues.

I don't want to tell you more but I do want everyone to see this intimate story of a sons love for his father, and a father discovering the life he thought he left behind was still inside him… what he took out of Hungary was inside him. His memories were/are his very Personal Belongings.

As PBS says, "Bela Bognar is no ordinary American dad. Now a suburbanite, he once fought against Soviet domination during the Hungarian revolution. Ever since, his life has been a longing for the glories of the past. Steven Bognar crafts a moving portrait of his father's 40- year quest for identity and home."

And as AllMovie & The New Your Times says in their FIVE STAR review, "Filmmaker Steven Bognar presents an intimate look into his father's quest to return to his homeland in this moving documentary. In 1956, Bela Bognar fled his native Hungary after taking an unsuccessful stand against the Russian invaders. When he left for Belgium, he swore he would never return. Bognar ended up in Madison, Wisconsin where he married, went to school and had Steven. Though he found success in his new home, the elder Bognar never felt at home in the US and eventually decided to try to return to Hungary."