If one were to define an eating disorder based on sound, they would most likely know or at least imagine how bulimia or binge eating sounds. But what about anorexia? What does the absence of food and the act of eating sound like? Hungarian student director Katica Kozma presents her audience with multiple scenes of a young anorexic man, Laci, gulping down several bottles of water and, a few scen...
Adam’s Afraid (2024), a Hungarian student film by Mátyás Kovács, takes place during a war in an alternate reality and is infused with a tension that constantly keeps us on edge. But one question lingers throughout: Who is the enemy in this war? The film intentionally leaves this ambiguous, focusing not on the war itself but on the internal conflict of its characters. We never find out who they ...
A government is to a nation what a parent is to a child. This idea has been a useful tool for propaganda throughout time and space, especially during war times. A strong parental figure can provide guidance, but the protecting hand can easily become the one that strangles. The new generation of Hungarian directors who presented their works in the student programme at the VFF festival is interes...
Visegrad Film Forum offers a rare opportunity for film universities from the CEE region to come together and showcase their students’ work. This occasion offers not only a comparison of the films themselves and the production culture of their host institutions and countries but also a platform to share and compare resources, pedagogical approaches and themes that interest the next generation of...
Marina Malysh’s By Love (2024) is a film about change—not the gradual kind, but the kind that happens in an instant, deep within. It follows a terminally ill man, ready to stop treatment, as he informs his father in a near-empty diner and later tells his doctor. These moments feel like the only solid ground in a film that quickly drifts into the abstract. As the protagonist slips into a surreal...