Hungary's film industry, you could say, has had a good war. Like the rest of the world, Hungary was hit by the coronavirus pandemic and, like the rest of the movie business, COVID-19 shuttered film and TV shoots at studios in and around Budapest.
But Hungary was one of the last places to shut down — low infection numbers in Spring meant there was no formal lockdown during the first wave of the pandemic in spring 2020 — and, because of smart planning and a cooperative, pro-film-industry government, the country's studios were among the first, in early summer, to welcome back international productions. "Of course a lot of international productions left Hungary [after the first wave], but by June almost all of the productions came back and.