ROAD TO CRIME AT THE BUDAPEST CLASSICS FILM MARATHONCinema Mentiré and Cinemateca Brasileira present the first Brazilian noir film in a stunning digital copy, featuring brand-new Hungarian subtitles
19 - 21 SEPTEMBER 2025 | Art+ Cinema and Urania Cinema, Budapest
Seventy years after its release in 1954, the first Brazilian noir film is back on the road! Na senda do crime, or Road to Crime, will be screened at the 8th Budapest Classics Film Marathon, taking place from 16 to 21 September in Budapest.
Organised by the National Film Institute Hungary, the Marathon is the country’s largest film festival, featuring a curated lineup of restored film classics at iconic venues across Budapest. This year’s edition highlights the 130th anniversary of cinema, commemorating the Lumière brothers’ first public screening in 1895, tributes to David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan, Károly Makk’s immortal works, epochal films by Hollywood maverick Joe Eszterhas and by world-famous producer Robert Lantos, great pieces from Asian female artists, and much more. Road to Crime – now titled Út a bűnbe – is presented alongside classics by John Huston, Charles Vidor, and many others in the strand heavy with the whiff of cigarettes Light and Shadow – The Noir and the City.
The print to be shown was specially digitised by Cinemateca Brasileira and Sociedade Amigos da Cinemateca for Cinema Mentiré’s season How to Dispose of a Dead Body: A Taste of Latin American Noir, held in September 2024 at the Ciné Lumière in London, with the support of Film Hub London. That was the first time this extraordinary film was screened outside Brazil in decades, and it now continues its journey landing in Budapest.
Cinema Mentiré will be in the Hungarian capital to introduce the screenings thanks to the support of Instituto Guimarães Rosa, the Embassy of Brazil in Budapest and Film Hub London. We are also grateful to André Sirangelo, our partner in all noir film adventures.
Friday, 19 September, 8.45pm @ Art+ Cinema Lugosi Hall
Sunday, 21 September, 3.00pm @ Urania Fábri Hall
ROAD TO CRIME
NA SENDA DO CRIME
Dir. Flamínio Bollini Cerri, Brazil, 1954, 71 min.
Sergio works as a mere employee at his rich uncle’s bank, leading a wasteful life in nightclubs and dating the sophisticated starlet Margot. Greedy and unhappy with this situation, he joins a trio of burglars to rob wealthy homes, later becoming the gang’s leader.
Road to Crime stands out as the one-of-a-kind noir entry into Brazilian cinema, which makes this notable work even more special with its tale of inferiority complex, pettiness and ambition that leads to criminality and consequent decay. Produced by Vera Cruz Cinema Company, an attempt to copy the Hollywood studio system in the burgeoning São Paulo as the upcoming biggest and richest city in South America, the film displays the faster growth of the metropolis at its time on several skyscrapers under construction, including the iconic final scene.
This was also the first film by Flamínio Bollini, an incredibly young theatre director from Italy, who was joined by fellow countryman screenwriter Fábio Carpi (a future Dino Risi collaborator) and the accomplished British cinematographer Chick Fowle in this Brazilian cinema landmark.
