Hen

Fleeing a battery farm, a hen on the run observes the world around her in György Pálfi's (almost) humanless thriller.

Having hatched in a battery farm, handled on a conveyor belt and spat out at the end, a black-feathered chook finds herself on the run. Fleeing down a gauntlet of dangers, she finds herself housed in a chicken coop by a seaside eatery where she observes the ways humans treat one another.

Curator's note
There’s no denying it – cinema has a human bias. Since cinema was born, we have centred the art form around the human perspective, commenting on ourselves and our existence within an echo chamber of human voices.

Following recent films like Gunda (2020)_and Cow_ (2021), György Pálfi’s Hen continues along a divergent thread of cinema decoupling films from the human experience, while shining a light back on ourselves from an outsider perspective.

Hen is a disarming film. It lures us in with adventure, hooks us with lead character that does the impossible and conveys emotion to us through its chooky glance. And then it teaches us how our humanity might be perceived from the outside. It takes fresh eyes for that – and in this case they happen to be a hen’s.