The first image of György Pálfi’s Hen – an extended close-up on a chicken’s cloaca as she lays an egg – might take the prize for the most arresting opening shot of 2025. It’s certainly a sight most cinephiles won’t have seen before, and there’s plenty of them to come in the Greek director’s poultry picture, which take a bird’s eye view from the very chick that hatches forth from that egg as she finds herself thrust into a world beyond the factory farm floor. Differentiated from the fluffy yellow sea of other chicks by her unusual dark brown plumage, one she’s grown, the central chicken’s (whom for the sake of simplicity will henceforth be referred to as Hen) physical difference sees her separated from the flock when the worker transporting them announces his boss won’t take the odd one out. He puts Hen in the cab of his truck and declares his wife will make her into a fine soup. Hen has other ideas.
Hen wants to live – and more than that, Hen longs for a family of her own. She gazes longingly at a clutch of eggs, and is repeatedly thwarted in her attempts to hatch one of her own by various ancillary humans, who have their own drama going on. When Hen ends up at a remote homestead, snatches of conversation and an eventual harrowing confrontation reveal there’s something much darker going on – but what are the foibles of human beings to a lonely chicken? Pálfi’s camera remains at eye-level with his feathered protagonist through all sorts of trials and tribulations, including a confrontation with some pigeons and a tense chase by a fox.
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It’s a film that could easily be dismissed as a gimmick, following in the footsteps of festival faves Viktor Kossakovsky’s Gunda, Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO and Andrea Arnold’s Cow which similarly foreground the experiences of farmyard animals to tell a wider story about humanity, but Pálfi’s sense of humour and dogged determination (eight chickens were trained for the central role) grant Hen some clemency. Giorgos Karvelas’ vivid cinematography emphasises Hen’s plucky attitude and sense of curiosity about the world around her, but the film takes us to some surprisingly dark places as well, devolving into an unexpected third act where all hell breaks loose. It’s a strange, uniquely compelling film, empathetic enough to make any carnivore think twice about their chicken nuggets while never becoming a screed about meat-eating or farming. Moreover, it’s a great introduction of the irreverent eye of György Pálfi, who has just as unique a view on the world as his beloved hen heroine.
