Kateř Tureček

In the original concept of the film as a computer game, the author presents a personal reportage from Budapest, where she spent a year as a student. The viewer, who takes on the role of a participant in the game, passes through several levels that introduce him to everyday moments touching on sensitive points of contemporary Hungarian society: he sees the capital through the eyes of a tourist, but mostly he is forced to reflect from the subjective perspective of Hungarian citizens on freedom of art, the right to education, the issue of medical care and the complex and controversial political situation in which the name of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is repeatedly invoked.

On the one hand, the multi-layered film functions as an autobiographical portrait of a non-binary person, but at the same time it presents the wide range of difficulties and joys that trans and non-binary people in the Czech Republic go through. The personal is political in this film, which is why the kaleidoscope of situations includes intimate conversations with their mother over fried schnitzels, shots from Ride of the Kings, costumed festivities in the Slovácko region, talking about their coming out around the fire, and serious topics of discriminatory Czech legislation regarding trans people. The informal character of the film is enhanced by authentic interviews and handheld camera footage accompanying the lives of the protagonists.

In a small village in the south of the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands, filmmaker Kateřina Turečková meets 16-year-old Ben, interested in learning about their newly discovered trans identity in person. Ben seeks refuge for their true feelings in cyberspace, finding moments of happiness by using green-screen technology to imagine their possible future. The film indirectly captures the (mis)understanding and (non-)acceptance Ben faces at school, its focused insight rounded out by the filmmaker’s interviews with Ben’s mother and sister, who inadvertently embody everything Ben hates about themself.