Vezér noted that the festival awards would not be presented until February 18 - five short films and one feature film from Hungarian directors are in the competition. But, the highlight of the festival for Hungarian participants has already passed with the presentation on Tuesday evening of the Berlinale Camera, a lifetime achievement award, to the Hungarian director Márta Mészáros.
Mészáros was the first Hungarian and the first female director ever to receive a Golden Bear, in 1973.
Hungary also raised its profile at the festival with the selection of the relatively unknown Hungarian actor Péter Nagy to participate in the Shooting Stars programme, an initiative for young talent by European Film Promotion which runs parallel with the festival. Nagy, who plays the lead in Gábor Herendi's new film Lora, won a prize in the programme.
A different Hungarian film has played almost every day of the festival, Vezér said. A screening of Krisztina Goda's Children of Glory at the start of the festival was exceptionally good, she added.
The film, about the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, was one of the most successful films in Hungary last year.
Another film with a 1956 theme was Zoltán Szilágyi Varga's short Court Record - In Memoriam Péter Mansfeld. The 7-minute film, drawn with coal, recounts the story of Péter Mansfeld, who was charged with participating in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution when he was just 16 years old, then executed a few days after his eighteenth birthday.
Károly Esztergályos's Men in the Nude, a tale of extraordinary love, was well received in the Panorama section.
Still to be shown are Csaba Bollók's Iska's Journey, which is the only representative from the region in the Generation section, and Árpád Bogdán's Happy New Life.
Iska's Journey shows the difficulties of life growing up on the streets. Bollók shot the film in the autumn of 2005 after researching the lives of homeless children living in a mining region in the Southern Carpathians for four years. The film won the top award at the 38th Hungarian Film Week earlier in February.
Happy New Life shows a boy's release into the world after growing up in an orphanage. The film is largely autobiographical.
Critics have written favourably about the Hungarian films at the festival, Vezér said. Also important, however, is how well talks with distributors are going. The makers of Men in the Nude, Iska's Journey and Children of Glory are all negotiating the release of their films in other countries, she said.
The Berlin International Film Festival, or Berlinale, runs from February 8 until 18.
