Réka Pigniczky

A documentary film about the transformation of an exile community nearly twenty years after the end of the Cold War. This film is about growing up in an exile community in the West, developing a double-identity, and becoming a hyphenated-somebody. It’s about learning to have two homelands at the same time - one in real life, and the other imagined and maintained by parents who were forced to flee. It is about a first generation of children whose parents lived abroad longer than they originally expected to, and who never really assimilated. The story is told through an unlikely, albeit dramatic reunion – one which involves a Hungarian rock opera performed in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California by a cast of 40-something Hungarian-Americans. The original cast, including the film's director, meet in the exact same spot they performed Stephen, the king 25 years ago, as Hungarian scouts during summer camp in 1984.

While planning their father's funeral, two sisters try to find out what he did as a freedom fighter in Hungary in 1956. The journey veers off course when they realize their father might not have been the hero they thought he was.

An intimate portrait of the Hungarian community in Cleveland, Ohio where 2nd and 3rd generation children still speak Hungarian and uphold the traditions of a 'motherland' they have never lived in.