Evolution

Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó and screenwriter Kata Wéber (White God and Pieces of a Woman) return with a powerful and richly cinematic drama tracing the historical trauma of the Second World War through three generations of a family. The film begins with an extraordinary, wordless sequence with dizzying cinematography, probing a surreal memory at the liberation of a concentration camp. Sequences in modern Europe depict a holocaust survivor in Budapest and a young couple involved in an anti-Semitic episode in contemporary Berlin as the film follows a trajectory of pain through to a more hopeful future.

‘When we started the process, we weren’t even sure that it would become a film. It absolutely isn’t a work of fiction since everything comes from Kata’s family, from friends and from other families. We collected and assembled all of that. Moreover, Kata’s mother was ill and we were scared of losing her, so she interviewed her, and that constitutes the inspiration for the film. Most importantly, when we moved to Berlin two years ago, we started to talk about our identity a lot and we wanted to make a film on this subject. Because Evolution isn’t a film about the Holocaust, but a film about our contemporary identity.’

Director Kornél Mundruczór, from an interview with Cineuropa.