Dir: László Nemes, Hungary/UK/US/Cyprus/France/Germany, 2025, 133 mins
Cast: Bojtorján Barábas, Andrea Waskovics, Grégory Gadebois
Review by Carol Allen
Perhaps the most moving scene in the film is at the very beginning in 1949 when Jewish children are being rehomed from an orphanage. Most of them are orphans, their families having died in the concentration camps. The now four year old Andor however isn’t. He is reunited with his mother Klára (Andrea Waskovics), who managed to hide for the duration of war while his father was imprisoned and died in a concentration camp.
Eight years later Andor, idolizes his late father from the tales he has been fed by his mother, though his relationship with her is distant and difficult. Then one day a strange man appears at their apartment with the gift of a huge haunch of pork. Andor takes an instant dislike to him and heaves the carcass out into the yard with the words “We don’t eat pork”.
But the brutish and rough spoken Berend (Grégory Gadebois) seems to think he has a right to Klára and a place in their lives and Andor gradually comes to realise that the Gentile Berend is his real father. He was the man who hid Klára from the Nazis, as he points out brusquely to the boy, indicating the bed in which, he says, “we made you.” There was obviously a price to be paid for her shelter. But will Andor come to accept Berend as his father?
Nems directorial debut was the breathtakingly brilliant and visceral Son of Saul, set in the horrors of Auschwitz. Compared to that, this film is somewhat disappointing.
Young Barabás is appropriately touching and also brattish as the young protagonist but the role is a bit limited in scope, even for a child actor. Considering the period in which it is set, it would have been good to see more of the effects of the recent failed revolution against which his story is set. The most memorable performance comes from Gadebois as the bullying and insensitive father struggling with his fierce desire to be recognized by his long lost son.
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