Given the current challenges of urban life here and around the world, there has never been a better time that to focus on how and why major cities develop as they do. Budapest Architecture Film Days is an international event highlighting this global metamorphosis. Organized annually by the Hungarian Contemporary Architecture Center, this four-day motion-picture attraction builds on the correlation between the movie industry and city constructions. For this tenth edition of Film Days, 30 features will be showing in original English language or with English subtitles between March 8th and 11th at the Toldi Cinema.

Residents for presidents! 2018 Budapest Architecture Film Days revolves around this main theme that is also the headline for one of the event’s seven segments. Documentaries selected for this festival show examples for bottom-up urban initiatives featuring cosmopolitan cities such as Barcelona, where new uses of public spaces have been introduced by local activists.

Film Days movies also highlight the life and work of a duo of top architects, namely Rem Koolhaas, best known for building the Casa da Música concert hall, a distinct polygon in Porto, and Bjarke Ingels, in charge of designing the Two World Trade Center Building in New York.

The event goes on to present several topics that are more closely related to Budapest: one of the city’s key challenges is its housing crisis, partly created by the steep increase of real-estate prices in recent years, resulting in uncertainty for young families and single households. Similar struggles are in the spotlight of the German documentary City for Sale that shows how speculative real-estate development, failing bank loans and rising property prices affect life in major European cities.

In addition to the 30 recently released films, one audience pick from each year of Film Days’ history will also be shown. Passes to the event are available from the Toldi Cinema website and at the ticket counter of the movie theater.