Think of Academy Award-winning movies such as "Poor Things," "Blade Runner 2049" and "The Brutalist" and you might assume they were made in Los Angeles.
But instead of being produced in California's famous studios, they were all shot largely in one central European country: Hungary. Huge production complexes, a variety of land and cityscapes and generous incentives have made Hungary a hub for Hollywood.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise, Eddie Redmayne, Liam Hemsworth, Anne Hathaway and Dakota Fanning were all reportedly seen in Hungary's capital Budapest and its surrounding areas this year.
Hungary has been involved with cinema since its earliest days. The Lumière brothers, makers of the cinematograph device, brought their invention to Budapest's Grand Hotel Royal in 1896 — just months after its Paris debut — and had camera operators film landmarks in the city the same year.
When Budapest's artists and writers saw the early movies they "lost their minds in a good way, and almost immediately started creating their own films," according to movie director Justin Reardon, who runs production firm The Royal Budapest Film Company with his wife Barbara. The first Hungarian film staged for the screen was shot in 1901 on the rooftop of the Uránia, a Budapest palace that hosted science presentations, which is now a "cathedral"-like movie theater, he said.