List of films shot in Budapest

This article attempts to provide a list of internationally distributed films that:

Were shot on location in the city of Budapest, capital of Hungary
Have the city of Budapest used as a set to portray other cities
Have the story or part of the story set in Budapest but was not shot there
If they are animated films, they have Budapest as their identifiable venue

Reasons

Since the 1990s, Budapest has been home to many international film productions. The reasons for this were given by film producer André Szőts in lectures given at the Eötvös Loránd University and in a 2004 television interview on Hungarian television TV2. According to Szőts, Hungary provides for a relatively cheap budget (e.g. salaries are much lower than just about anywhere to the West), and Budapest has kept the image of a city that is so diverse in building types from different eras that it could be substituted for (or disguised to be) any large European city. Szőts has given an example of a French film he produced where Budapest was a set for 30 different cities.

The lists

List of films that were shot in Budapest

Escape to Victory (1981)
Music Box (1989)
The Cremaster Cycle (Episode 5) (1997)
Gloomy Sunday"" (1999)
Au Pair (1999)
An American Rhapsody (2001)
Last Run (2001) (IMDb entry)
Dinotopia (2002)
I Spy (2002)
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008)
Bel Ami (2011)

List of films that have disguised Budapest as other cities

as Moscow: Red Heat (1988)
as Paris: Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)
Mortal Kombat (1995)
as Buenos Aires: Evita (1996)
Il Fantasma dell'Opera (directed by Dario Argento, 1998)
as Rome: Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (Straight from the Heart, 1999)
as East Berlin: Spy Game (2001)
as Berlin: Max (2002)
as a fictional city: Underworld (2003), venue: Ferenciek tere, see [1]
as London: Being Julia (2004)
as Rome, Paris and London among others: Munich (2005)
as Paris: Bel Ami (2011).

List of films set in Budapest

The following films or television series episodes had a plot or part of a plot set in Budapest but were not shot on location.

MacGyver episode 5, "The Thief of Budapest" (1985) - In this episode Budapest looks like a mixture of a city in Turkey and one in Italy. Also, Budapest is set to be a five-minute drive away from the Austrian border, when in reality it is about 200 kilometres away.
Van Helsing (2004) - Important pieces of plot take place in the Budapest of 1890s, which was only shown as a background image which merged artist's concepts with a contemporary tourist photograph of the city.

List of animated films featuring Budapest

Willy the Sparrow (1989)
The District! (2004)