Orphan

Orphan / Árva

László Nemes, Hungary, France, Germany, UK, 2025, 132’ 

A harrowing, raw film about a boy named Andor who, in the wake of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising, finds himself confronting dark family secrets in an occupied country still licking its wounds from WWII. 

“Orphan is the chronicle of a child’s coming to terms with his own family history and his own self, both reflective of the turmoils of the twentieth century in the heart of Europe. These stories have shaped our present and continue to haunt us, even questioning our future as a civilisation. My own family’s story served as a canvas for Orphan, spanning the ravages of the Holocaust and the tyranny of the communist regime. I wanted to create a cinematic language that would allow the viewer to revisit the traumatic experience of a child — trapped between the perception of a boy crushed by a menacing world and a family triangle he fails to understand. Ultimately, the film explores a question of inner darkness: will Andor, the young hero of Orphan, accept the stuff that he is made of?” László Nemes 

László Nemes was born in 1977 in Budapest, Hungary. After studying History, International Relations and Screenwriting in Paris, he worked as an assistant director in France and Hungary. For two years, he worked as Béla Tarr’s assistant and subsequently studied film directing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. His shorts have been awarded thirty prizes in more than 100 international film festivals. His first feature film Son of Saul won several important international prizes.