Hungary has made its Oscar call, and honestly, it’s no surprise. László Nemes’ ‘Orphan‘ is officially the country’s submission for Best International Feature at the 98th Academy Awards, and if you have followed Nemes since his 2015 breakout ‘Son of Saul‘ (the one that crushed Cannes and then took home the Oscar), you will know the man doesn’t do light viewing. And Orphan, which is his third feature after ‘Sunset,’ is proof that he hasn’t lost his touch when it comes to turning history into an emotional wreckage.
Premiering in Venice’s main competition, the movie Orphan immediately stood out in the crowd for critics and the media. It is a movie about a young Jewish boy named Andor, who lives with his mother, clinging to the hope that his father will return from the camps someday. Every bedtime story, every ritual in their little apartment in Budapest feels like it’s been designed to keep that hope alive. But Nemes, being Nemes, he doesn’t let us stay in that fragile dream for long.
Nemes and Royer’s Brutal Precision in Storytelling
The movie changes the minute a stranger shows up at their doorstep. He is rough, intimidating, and full of half-truths about Andor’s father. At first, you want to believe he might bring closure. But instead, the stranger cracks open the illusion that Andor’s mother has been building inside her all this time. From that moment, the film becomes a slow unraveling story arc of a family, its deep belief in faith, and of a boy’s last shred of childhood innocence.
What hit the hardest is how Nemes doesn’t just show loss as an event. The movie unfolds with time, as he emphasized by showing that the entire movie is a process; after all, the agony behind waiting becomes its own kind of prison. Andor isn’t only robbed of his father. He is also robbed of the time he spent hoping and waiting. By the end, we finally witness the truth about his father’s fate, which leaves Andor staring into a void so wide you can feel the air leave the room. It is really brutal, and it lingers long after the credits.
If you have seen Son of Saul, you will remember how claustrophobic that film felt, because the camera was glued to the protagonist’s shoulder. Orphan, in contrast, was shot differently, but it still traps you. Cinematographer Mátyás Erdély, who has basically become Nemes’ visual partner-in-crime, goes for muted, almost drained tones on 35mm, processed using an old-school bleach bypass technique. The result? A world that looks like it’s been bleached of joy, because every frame feels both cinematic and heartbreakingly raw, like flipping through photographs that history almost didn’t want us to see.
Filmed largely in Budapest, the settings of the movie Orphan are very haunting. There’s one sequence in a half-destroyed synagogue where young Andor wanders through dust and broken benches. The camera circles him, and it feels like ghosts are watching him. Nemes doesn’t need special effects or melodrama. Just a boy in a ruined place, and your chest tightens.
A Cinema That Refuses to Be Forgotten, No Matter the Outcome
Nemes co-wrote the script with Clara Royer (the same duo behind Son of Saul and Sunset), and their partnership really shows. The dialogue is sparse, but every line feels like it’s carrying extra weight. When Andor’s mother insists, “Your father will return,” we feel both her desperation and her willful blindness. She is begging the universe to confirm and bring her husband back.
The production itself was stacked with production houses like Pioneer Pictures in Hungary, teamed up with Good Chaos in the UK, AR Content, Mid March Media, and several European backers. You can also feel the resources in the details. From the lived-in Budapest apartment to the atmospheric outdoor sets built at NFI Studios’ new backlot. But the real magic is how all this scale still funnels into something painfully intimate. As per critics and variety, Orphan isn’t an easy sit. It’s slow, it’s quiet, and it’s not out to entertain us in the traditional sense. But that’s what makes it unforgettable.
As fans of Nemes’ earlier work, what struck all of us the most is how Orphan feels both familiar and completely new. It has the same suffocating emotional weight as Son of Saul, but instead of the immediacy of the camps, it focuses on the silence that comes after, the waiting, the not-knowing, and the quiet lies told to survive.
Hungary picking this film for the Oscars isn’t just about awards strategy. It’s about putting forward a story that still matters. A story that doesn’t let us forget how fragile hope can be. And whether or not Orphan goes all the way on Oscar night, one thing is certain: that Nemes has once again made a film that refuses to be ignored.
