The festival, which runs until October 21, offers an outstanding theatre programme, with performances by the Berliner Ensemble, which will bring their production of Ibsen's Peer Gynt with them to Budapest, and by the Hungarian actress Dorka Gryllus and her German colleague Henriette Müller, who will stage She Loves Me, based on texts by the Hungarian writer Péter Esterházy. Budapest's excellent Katona József Színház will perform In the Pernicious Proximity of Humans. At the Örkény Theatre, Eszter Novák will direct Péter Kárpáti's Dreamingpool (Endre Nagy's Cabaret), and the Radnóti Theatre will perform János Térey's Table Music. For children (and adults alike), the Budapest Puppet Theatre will put on Ágnes Bálint's The Diary of a Mouse.
On the festival's musical lineup will be a tribute to the late great American musician and composer Frank Zappa, called 100 Percent Zappa. The UMZE Chamber Ensemble and the Amadinda Percussion Group will perform at the Italian Institute. At the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, the pianist Gábor Csalog and the cellist István Varga will perform a programme entitled Labyrinths and Fugues. At the Old Music Academy, the Liszt Ferenc School of Music and New York's Juilliard School of Music will showcase three American and three Hungarian composers who attend the schools. Also on the programme are performances by the Japanese jazz group Soil and Pimp Sessions and the Finnish guitarist Jarmo Saari Solu.
Among the other highlights of the festival will be a screening of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's 1922 silent film Nosferatu accompanied by a score composed for electronics and organ by the Austrian organist, Wolfgang Mitterer. René Clair's 1923 silent film Paris qui dort will also be shown with music by the French composer Yan Maresz. In addition to the silent films, Russian films will have a high profile at the festival, with nine new Russian feature films and several shorts showing at the Cirko Gejzír cinema.
On the dance programme are performances by the Israeli Yasmeen Godder and the Japanese troupe Pappa Tarahumara, as well as by Márta Ladjánszky and Anna Réti, two award winners at Budapest's Fringe Festival in the spring.
On the festival's City Walks programme will be a tour of the Kőbányai Brewery and the Kelenföldi Power Plant control room.
This year's festival - the 16th one - has a budget of HUF 162 million, of which about one-quarter is expected to come from ticket sales and another quarter from the Budapest City Council. Additional funding will come from the National Cultural Fund.
