Hen

Please note that the film does not have English subtitles and has only partially English dialogue!

Love & Anarchy veterans will remember Hungarian György Pálfi’s film from the year 2006, Taxidermia, a very profound examination of the human body. Twenty years later Pálfi, the wild child of avant-garde cinema, is still unpredictable.

Hen, set in Greece, begins with a graphic shot of an egg-laying hen. The egg continues its journey inside the machinery of the layer farm and soon the protagonist and hero of the story hatches into sight: a black hen, part of the Leghorn breed.

The wise little hen manages to escape at the end of the production chain, and after wandering around the mountains it ends up at a battery farm on the property of a shabby seaside tavern. The tavern’s elderly householder has a good heart, but his son-in-law is up to some shady business. Like its evident role model, Bresson’s Balthazar the donkey, Pálfi’s hen too ends up witnessing the excruciating cruelty of the human animal – both in the hen’s old and new environment.

Pálfi has called Hen his most ordinary film yet. For the director the film is, indeed, uncharacteristically classical and full of warmth and humour. Yet Hen is a completely peculiar and even chilling depiction of the systematic oppression of both animals and humans. And the eight hen actors, taking turns in the leading role, are absolutely fantastic.

Tommi Kumén (translated by Vilja Hynynen)