Good Kids

In an average Hungarian family home, a straight-A-student, yearning to be free, starts turning into a bear.

Blending haunted melodrama with a self-looping meta-documentary structure, this immersive film follows a real young actress playing an actress adopting the identity of the lost lover of a stranger, dragging her into reliving unprocessed trauma at the boundary between compulsive lying and self-soothing fantasy. Made with the last acting class before the far-right takeover of Hungary's national theatre school, the film captures in its form how poisonous power structures seep into the most intimate desires of a generation.

Ten-year-old Palkó has just moved home to Budapest from Berlin and observes the daily life of an ordinary Hungarian elementary school with confused amazement. Juci, the young teacher just started working there. She is the only one who understands Palkó, as in their own way, they are both suffering from the same, sometimes grotesque educational system.

At dawn in Western Hungary, 14-year-old Hunor and his family bring their greyhound dogs to clear wildlife from ZalaZONE, one of Europe’s most advanced autonomous vehicle test tracks. Their ancient knowledge quietly makes way for a militarizing future.

Jef is stranded in Budapest and so spends a day reckoning with past and present lovers, as well as an estranged family, in this gorgeous low-fi indie drama.