Wild Roots

Külön falka

Proton Cinema

VERDICT: Two excellent non-professional stars lend extra emotional punch to this confident Eurodrama debut.

A lively tale of raw emotion, reconciliation and redemption, Wild Roots is a personal project for Hajni Kis. Drawing on her own dysfunctional family history, the young Hungarian writer-director delivers a highly assured debut feature, vindicating her risky decision to cast non-professional actors in the lead roles. Kis is cutting her cloth from familiar fabric here, and unashamedly presses some obvious heart-tugging buttons. But this contemporary father-daughter drama is still an engaging and handsome package overall, with strong use of music and flashy pop-video visuals. World premiered in Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Wild Roots is probably too small and local a story to make a big splash globally, but it marks its director and cast as rising stars with bright futures.

Gusztav Dietz, a former heroin addict and mixed martial arts fighter who enjoys tabloid-level fame in Hungary, brings an authentically edgy loose-cannon energy to the screen in his first dramatic performance as a shaven-headed ex-con trying to rebuild his life following a series of tragic mistakes. And Zorka Horváth is a terrific discovery as the sassy 12-year-old heroine, radiating latent star quality in her film debut.

Tibor (Dietz) is a nightclub bouncer with a short-fuse temper and a dark back story, including a long prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter. For reasons that soon become clear, he is forbidden to see daughter Niki (Horváth), a mischievous schoolgirl now living in a cramped apartment with her sternly protective grandmother (Éva Füsti Molnár). When a string of minor bureaucratic issues bring Tibor back into Niki’s orbit, the family make sure to keep the pair apart. But the curious, resourceful girl figures out her father’s identity and begins shadowing him.

In one of several implausible plot twists, Niki sneaks into Tibor’s nightclub work-place and witnesses him committing a violent assault on a drunken customer. After a frosty initial encounter, the reunited pair are soon arranging clandestine meetings together, bonding over junk food and kitsch Eurodisco music. When Niki takes a leaf from her father’s book by beating up a mean-girl classroom bully, Tibor proudly takes her side in the face of school disapproval. Increasingly, these mutually alienated outsiders savour their shared acts of rebellion, but there is a price to pay. Facing mounting legal and financial problems, and possibly more jail time, Tibor hatches a reckless scheme to go on the run with Niki.

Wild Roots is consistently pleasing to the eye and ear, with cinematographer Ákos Nyoszoli working in vivid disco-neon colours and finding painterly beauty even amidst the towering concrete-slab apartment blocks that dominate formerly Communist nations like Hungary. A luminous score, by Oleg Borsos, combines pulsing electronica with thumping Europop. Kis concludes her cathartic two-hander with a cautiously optimistic sense of closure, but she avoids yielding to full mushy sentimentality. Tibor’s rougher edges, including hints of racism, remain unresolved and unchallenged. Although Niki spends much of the film wearing a cheap tiara, she never transforms into a Disney princess. Broken families can sometimes heal, but the scars still show.

Director: Hajni Kis
Screenplay: Fanni Szántó, Hajni Kis
Cast: Gusztáv Dietz, Zorka Horváth, Éva Füsti Molnár, Viktor Kassai
Producers: Júlia Berkes, Balázs Zachar
Cinematography: Ákos Nyoszoli
Editing: Vanda Gorácz
Music: Oleg Borsos
Art director: Anna Nyitrai
Production companies: Proton Cinema (Hungary), M-Philms (Slovakia)
World sales: m-appeal world sales UG, Berlin
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (East of the West Competition)
98 minutes