Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

Photos by Jeff Harris.

It’s Spring, 1957, in Budapest, after the failed Hungarian uprising. Though young Andor Hirsch looks like an angelic Oliver Twist, he’s actually a tough kid, given to smoking, jumping onto streetcars and squeezing in and out of small places. He knows every loose fence, every crumbling building in his part of Budapest. He likes collecting ticket stubs and returning old bottles. He lives with his mother Klara (who survived the Holocaust in hiding) while his father was sent to the camps. But he still talks to his Dad each day, patiently waiting for his return. Until one day, an enormous thuggish man, a heavy drinking pork butcher who speaks like an oaf and rides a motorcycle, enters his life. He knows his mom, and seems to like Andor, too, for some reason. But he refuses to accept that this creature could possibly be his biological father. He’d rather be called an orphan.

Orphan is the name of a new film that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. It is a lavishly detailed and deeply moving coming-of-age drama about the family history of a boy trying to survive in a ruined, Soviet-occupied Budapest. It’s co-written and directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Laszlo Nemes (Son of Saul). I last interviewed him on this show in 2016, about Sunset.

I spoke with Laszlo Nemes in person during #TIFF50.

Orphan will open in North America next year.