Katalin Varga

Katalin lives in a Transylvanian village. Her husband learns that her son is not his and throws her out. She takes the boy and sets off in a horse cart, telling him they are going to visit his grandmother. Her actual purpose is different: to find the two men who raped her years ago. Peter Strickland writes and directs in his first film. Hilda Péter plays Katalin. The story of the production is as well known as the film. Strickland is English; he went to Romania with a small inheritance, shot with local actors and a very small crew, and finished the film with his own money. Its strongest element is the sound design. The forest, the wind and distant noises work independently of the image and most of the tension is built there; Strickland went on working with sound in his later films. The narrative does not present revenge as satisfaction. Katalin finds what she is looking for and the matter becomes more complicated when she does; the second man's life, his wife and his remorse are the hardest part. It won a Silver Bear for the sound design at the 2009 Berlin film festival. The landscape stands inside the film as a threat; the countryside is nowhere made beautiful. Who it is for: viewers who like severe European art cinema and films that attend to sound. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the pace is slow, and the ending provides no relief.