The Hungarian documentary “Golden Legends” has found quite the success in the box office, grossing $470,782 in sales since its release in April to become the highest grossing local documentary to ever release in Hungary.
The film, produced by Tamas S. Zákonyi, features the story of the Hungarian men’s national water polo team’s dominant run between 2000 and 2008 that saw the team win 3 straight Olympic gold medals. In addition, during that span, the Hungarian men found themselves on the podium in 22 of the 23 international tournaments they competed in, with the team winning 10 gold and 8 silver medals.
Some of the players who participated on those teams are regarded as some of the greatest water polo players of all-time, including Tibor Benedek and Tamás Kásás, who both competed on all three of those aforementioned Olympic teams. Benedek scored 65 goals in Olympic competition across 5 editions of the Games from 1992 to 2008, the most all-time for a Hungarian water polo player and the 2nd most of all-time. Kasas scored 56 goals across 5 Olympic Games to rank 6th all-time worldwide during his career from 1996 to 2012.
According to Zakonyi, the film is intended to allow people to “experience the successes of the past.”
“We wanted to make a film with a feel-good tone, fast-paced, witty, but at the same time dramatic and emotional. [I wanted to create] a cinema experience which has a swimming pool atmosphere, where viewers can relive, among other things, the Olympic final in Athens in 2004.”
In the 2004 Olympic final, the Hungarians narrowly defeated a strong team from Serbia and Montenegro by a score of 8-7 thanks to a fourth quarter comeback that saw the Hungarian team score 3 goals to erase a 2 point deficit in the final. In the match, Gergely Kiss played a huge role for the Hungarian team, scoring multiple times, including the game-winning goal on a “powerplay” opportunity.
“Golden Legends” is still available in theaters across Hungary. Internationally, the film is available via NFI World Sales.
And then came Serbia with the best team ever assembled and claimed everything multiple times. If any documentary has to be made it is about that team, and not by Serbian directors but the Hollywood ones.
kasas 4th quarter play in athens was the best i have ever seen