Milán Vajda

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.

Matteo, a boy from the city, goes to visit his grandfather in a secluded mountain village, where preparations for a local ancient festival are under way. Matteo spends the eve of the festival with Lidia and three other boys from the village. The group of kids begins a dangerous game, bringing up obscure mysteries that are rooted in the past of that mountain valley. Matteo thus goes through a sort of initiation, at the end of which he is able to exorcise his fears, but only after becoming uncomfortably conscious of the existence of evil.

Gabriel Ventuza lives the peaceful life of a herbalist, growing and cultivating medical herbs in Italy. One day he receives an order from his older brother who is just out of prison for one day. Gabriel should go to the remote little town of Bogdanski Dolina in Far-Eastern Europe, the place of their childhood and take out the mortal remains of their father, the late people smuggler, the famous Victor Ventuza. Gabriel leaves his "eventless" life behind and goes to accomplish his mission. He is robbed on the way, his belongings, passport, money and even his clothes are stolen and finds himself in a small closed town surrounded by hills of stinking toxic waste, where strange priests rule and fear keeps people quiet, producing a general atmosphere of insecurity.