Screening Time: Sunday, May 4, 4:30 PM, Charles Theatre 4

Director: György Pálfi

Cast: Ferenc Bandi, József Forkas, Attila Kaszás, Ági Margittay, Ferenc Nagy, Jánosné Nagy

Country: Hungary
Year: 2002
Running Time: 75 min
Format: 35mm

Hukkle was Hungary’s official submission for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award, and director György Pálfi won the European Discovery of the Year award at the European Film Awards for what is a stunning feature film directorial debut. Pálfi takes a creative and exciting approach to storytelling in this amusing and inventive dark comedy.

A snake slithers out of its den, and an old man’s hiccups set the beat as we eavesdrop on the lives of the human and animal inhabitants of a small Hungarian village. What follows is a collection of exquisitely orchestrated scenes of the everyday occurrences of the town. Individual scenes are breathtaking feats of technical mastery, and the images at first seem random, but as they progress, the story unfolds, revealing the dark secret that lies beneath the idyllic setting.

Though told almost completely without words except for a song sung at the end, Hukkle still relies heavily on sound to tell its story. The sounds of everyday life blend to create an almost symphonic score that helps to propel the story along. Hukkle serves both as a unique viewing experience and an exciting introduction to a new filmmaking talent.

--Dan Krovich

Presented By: György Pálfi and Zsófia Ruttkay

As a youth György Pálfi he experimented making Super 8 films before entering into the Theatre and Film Academy of Budapest in 1995. While there he made several award-winning short films that played on the festival circuit. He graduate in 2000, and Hukkle won the prize of Best First Film and Gene Moskowitz Prize of foreign critics at the Hungarian Film Week in 2002.

Zsófia Ruttkay has worked as theatre dramaturg and written translations of many plays into Hungarian, including Neil Labute’s Bash, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, and Tom Stoppard’s After Margriite. She has also written several screenplays and participated in the Sundance Institutes screenwriter’s lab in 2001.