The District!


The District! is a 2004 Hungarian caricaturistic animated film directed by Áron Gauder. Its original title is a shortened colloquial form of nyolcadik kerület, the eighth district of Budapest, also known as Józsefváros, including an infamous neighbourhood where the film takes place. It is sometimes labelled as the Hungarian South Park.
It has been distributed in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, United Kingdom, France, the Benelux countries, Romania, Poland, Portugal and Taiwan, and it is going to be shown in the United States.
It was also shown at film festivals in Helsinki, Toronto, Copenhagen, Zagreb, Karlovy Vary and the below venues and it will be shown in Warsaw, Vancouver and São Paulo.
The animated technique for this movie was rather innovative. The artists took 350 headshot pictures of each actor and used these photos for the expressing emotions and the animation of the heads. The bodies were hand drawn.

Plot

The film displays the Hungarian, Roma, Chinese and Arab dwellers and their alliances and conflicts in a humorous way, embedded into a fictive story of a few schoolchildren's oil-making time-travel and a Romeo and Juliet-type love of a Roma guy towards a white girl.

Cast and crew

;Directed by
;Screenplay
;Produced by
;Original Music by
;Cast

Awards

DateAwardFestivalLocationLinkobs
2004-12Best Visual ExpressionMagyar FilmszemleHungary
2005-06-11Cristal for best featureAnnecy International Animated Film FestivalAnnecy, France^
2005-08-19Grand PrizeSeoul International Cartoon and Animation FestivalSeoul, South Korea
2005-09-25Mercury Filmworks Grand Prize For Animated FeatureOttawa International Animation FestivalOttawa, Ontario, Canada^
2005-09-28Best Animated FeatureKROK International Animated Films FestivalRussia^
2005-10-13Best Animated FilmFestival de Cine de SitgesSitges, Spain
2005Cross of Merit of the Republic of HungaryHungary^
2005Best Hungarian Feature; Kecskemét City AwardKAFF Kecskemét, Hungary
2005Golden Zagreb awardAnimafest ZagrebZagreb, Croatia
2006Best FeatureAnimaSpain
2006Best FeatureCUFF 2006 Zagreb, Canada
2006Best feature; Audience AwardAnima Belgium
2007Lisbon City PrizeMonstra FestivalLisbon, Portugal

Notes:
The film has been presented in several film festivals across the world, including: