Hétpróba (Seven Trials) is an intimate portrayal of Póka Eszter, an opera singer and single mother, and her four teenage children: the two older twin sisters Kati and Eszter, the middle child, Erzsi, and the youngest boy, Jani. Guided by Maurer's off-screen voice, each family member responds openly to a series of playful and often amusing challenges, revealing private, hidden musings and tragedies in the process. Although they appear individually in front of the camera for most of the film, Maurer employs a range of cinematic strategies as footage of each family member is dissected, repeated, reframed, halted, multiplied, and distorted through superimposition, further accentuating their connections and differences.
Loosely grouped and separated by a black screen and piano chorus, the seven trials in the title include replicated mannerisms, jokes, trick questions, ridiculous dares, a painfully casual conversation about domestic abuse at the hands of the conspicuously absent father, along with revelations about the recent suicide attempt by one of the twins and concludes with a dress-up session with makeup and theatrical props. Rarely screened, the film was digitised and translated by the National Hungarian Film Archive in 2021.
This screening will conclude with an in-conversation and Q&A with curator and academic Lina Džuverović.
Organised in collaboration with Open City Documentary Festival