OPEN CALLS: Green Film Lab - Budapest, TFL Co-Production Fund & TFL Next - Feature Film
Projects
The Hunter's Son
A terrible and unexpected act forces a boy and his family to face a crossroads of their lives.
A 12-year-old boy known as Rabbit grows up in a marginalised world. His violent father is working at the border patrol. Rabbit looks up to his friend and partner in crime who is a migrant trying to cross the border in search of a better life. When the boy disappears without a trace, Rabbit envies him, he feels abandoned. In winter Rabbit goes on a hunting trip with his family. In the wild isolated landscape, “their territory”, they feel at home. When a stranger looms up in the distance, fate strikes unexpectedly, tragedy erupts, shattering lives irrevocably. Delusions become a driving force in their lives, creating great inner tension and distress. Eventually Rabbit will be caught. Confused in an ultimate attempt to overcome the violent event the father decides to flee his familiar surroundings by crossing his own boundaries: he becomes a stranger himself. The Hunter’s Son is an atmospheric and thrilling film about guilt and innocence, alienation, displacement and detachment from society.
To me cinema is an expression of emotions, it has not only to grab you in a poetic, beautiful and gentle way, but also conveys violence, aggression and frustrations. I start with an emotion, the state of mind of a character, a complicated life. This film focuses on a father and son and their emotional journey. They live in an area that has become a cross-border zone, the film, however, is not a social plea but a personal drama that addresses the refugee issue indirectly. I want to reflect on our perpetual tolerance of violence in various forms and ask the questions what is guilt and when is someone guilty? We all know the commandment “thou shalt not kill”, but violence is lying just below the surface in all of us. The viewer is invited to immerse into the protagonists’ life, in their harsh world, a twilight zone between reality and fantasy. To visualize the world of the main characters, we will develop a world in which grim brutality and poetry co-exist and sometimes use an almost documentary approach. The meaning is not only to be found in the plot but also in the atmosphere. An intimate film about memories of childhood, adolescence and dreams of life. A world of image and imagination.
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