Included at the Palm Springs International Film Festival is László Nemes’ third film, Orphan – the story of a Hungarian Jewish boy in search of his father during the Hungarian uprising against the Soviet occupation in 1956. Andor (Bojtorján Barabas) desperately longs for the return of his father, a Hungarian Jew named Hirsch, gone missing since WWII. But his Jewish mother (Andrea Waskovics) suggests that Berend (Grégory Gadebois), a gentile who hid her on his farm during the Holocaust, may really be his father. Rejecting this as unthinkable betrayal, Andor prays for the return of his real father, even praying to him, while acting out rebelliously in ways small and large. The film has three screenings, the first being on TUESDAY, JANUARY 6, 2026 at 1:15 PM, at the Festival Theatres 4/5.
Nemes’ first film Son of Saul (2015) won an Oscar for Best International Feature Film and this film too ventures into Oscar-winning territory – largely sue to the talented cinematographer Mátyás Erdély) who creates a visual marvel with every shot artfully composed. Budapest’s architecture and Soviet-era period trappings shown off in a hazily sepia-toned light that gives this story of absent fathers and imposed ones the ominous glow of a powerful myth. With no support for their self-determination, Hungarians in 1956 were orphaned by the times under Soviet rule.
Young Andor is raised by his mother with the tale of an idealized dead father. But eventually in the course of the story, he will be confronted with a brutish man who claims to be his real father. In 1949, young Andor is retrieved from a state run orphanage by his mother Klara (Andrea Waskovics), a woman he barely remembers. His father, he’s told, was deported to a concentration camp. Eight years late, Andor (Bojtorján Barabas) patiently awaits the return of his father, though increasingly it appears this may never happen.
The orphan of the title is not in fact an orphan; his mother is still alive. Andor (Bojtorján Barábas) is an angry, lonely teenage boy who idolises the memory of his father, Hirsch, who went missing during the second world war but who might still be alive somewhere. Andor still conducts imaginary conversations with him, and his mother Klara works in a grocery store.
Meanwhile, a recently stymied uprising against communism, brutally quashed by the Soviet regime, has Budapest on edge. The relative of a family friend was able to flee the failed rebellion, but being badly wounded, he remains in hiding. Klara declines to participate in assisting his mother in moving the wounded rebel as he awaits transport to America. But life changes drastically when Berend (Grégory Gadebois) suddenly reunites with Klara unexpectedly, and it’s revealed not only was he responsible for hiding Klara during the war.
He is also Andor’s biological father, and has every intention of assuming this role. Physically domineering and prone to physical abuse, Berend, a butcher by trade who refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer, is hardly the father figure Andor envisioned. Refusing to accept this reality, the horror of his mother’s tactics for survival leads young Andor to make a difficult decision.
Orphan touches upon the film noir handbook of something like The House of Telegraph Hill (1951), fusing real-world chaos with sumptuous identity politics in a compelling ethical dilemma of survival strategies. There is some similarly to other films about stolen identity narratives, but Nemes tells his story from the perspective of an overtly determined child. Nemes creates a concoction that plays like the nightmare version of Claude Berri’s The Two of Us (1967), wherein the relationship between a gruff, grubby adult male and a precocious child creates the dramatic catalyst.
The identity politics are also reminiscent of Hitchcock, for there is an ambiguity of paternalism which is never fully satisfied. The belief, or perhaps the recognition, of the role of biological fatherhood, can only really be confirmed by Klara, who clearly is operating in survival mode and will say whatever makes sense to make her current situation work.
The mournful Andrea Waskovics, whose screen presence is reminiscent of Hanna Schygulla, recalls Agnieszka Holland’s Angry Harvest (1985), in which Elisabeth Trissenaar, a Jewish woman, must offer her body to Armin Mueller-Stahl, who has agreed to hide her on his property. Likewise, the political realities of post-WWII Hungary in the late 1950s have cemented an environment of terror in the Soviet Union’s quest to thwart anti-communist uprisings.
French actor Grégory Gadebois is perfectly cast as the corpulent butcher who has come to lay stake to his claim on Klara…though there is the nagging reality of his previous wife and special needs child who are so conveniently out of the picture.
The cherubic Bojtorján Barabas, who disturbingly has made a habit of speaking to his imaginary father figure through the boiler, a man who was likely gassed in the camps. Barabas is the beating heart of the film, a child wise beyond his years and committed to keeping the memory of his deceased father alive, which, tragically, might be a complete fabrication.
The showtimes for “Orphan” at the Palm Springs International Film Festival are: Tuesday, January 6, 2026, at 1:15 in Festival Theaters 4/5; Wednesday, January 7, 2026, at 7:30 PM at Palm Springs High School; and Thursday, January 8, 2026, at 10:00 AM in Festival Theaters 1. Tickets are available for all three screenings. Go to: https://psfilmfest.org/film-festival-2026/film-finder/orphan.
