Viharsarok [Land of Storms] *** (2014, András Sütö, Ádám Varga, Sebastian Urzendowsky) – Classic Movie Review 12,854

The beautiful, intense, moving 2014 Hungarian movie Viharsarok [Land of Storms] is a tremendously good gay-themed drama, with fine performances. Szabolcs quits football in Germany and returns to Hungary, where meets Aron…

Best friends Szabolcs and Bernard play in the same German football team, but after a lost game, Szabolcs goes home to Hungary. He meets another boy, Áron, and they become lovers, but soon Bernard comes after his friend.

The beautiful, intense, moving 2014 Hungarian movie Viharsarok [Land of Storms] is a tremendously good, but tremendously depressing gay-themed drama, with some fine performances, particularly by András Sütö and Ádám Varga, who have most of the film to themselves.

András Sütö and Sebastian Urzendowsky star as inseparable roommate best friends Szabolcs and Bernard, who are playing in the same German football team, but things get a bit overheated in the showers, leading to a fight.

After a lost game, when a big-club scout walks away and the coach calls him a mediocre player, Szabolcs decides to quit football and go home to rural Hungary, against his father’s wishes, and take over a dilapidated, leaky inherited countryside home from his grandfather.

But there he meets another troubled young man, apprentice stonemason Áron (Ádám Varga), who is stealing his motorbike, and they both explore their identities and become lovers amid a whole tidal wave of homophobia. But soon Bernard comes from Germany to find his friend and convince him to return to football training.

The film is one of considerable power and stature, sweeping the audience up in the fate of the three men. It is strongly handled with some very strong highlight moments, some of them quite harsh and upsetting. [Spoiler alert] In this Land of Storms, as well as Land of Anger, Violence and Homophobia, it never looks as though it is going to be a happy story. True, there are at least two possibilities for love and true happiness for Szabolcs, so the heart-breaking ending is devastating.

It is urgent and relevant, worryingly based on a true story. So no doomed fantasies here then.

[Spoiler alert] However, director Ádám Császi has said that he changed the true story about a gay footballer and his lover in rural Hungary because the reality was too brutal. He said he wanted to show that the local man growing up in a deeply religious rural environment, finding that he is attracted to men, ‘has no set of tools on how to deal with this homophobia and this is actually the motive of the murder’.

What actually happened is that two gay men were killed by a third man who chopped up their bodies. ‘If I told the real story,’ Császi said, ‘then the motive of the murder would be jealousy and not this homophobia in society’.

Viharsarok [Land of Storms] is the feature film debut of director Ádám Császi. It premiered at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival on 8 February 2014, and was released on 20 March 2014 in Hungary).

The cast are András Sütő as Szabolcs, Ádám Varga as Áron, Sebastian Urzendowsky as Bernard, Enikő Börcsök as Áron’s mother, and Lajos Ottó Horváth as Szabolcs’s father.

Viharsarok is directed by Ádám Császi, runs 105 minutes, is made by Proton Cinema, Café Film and I’m Film, is released by Cirko Film (Hungary), M-Appeal (international) and TLA Releasing (US, UK), is written by Ádám Császi and Iván Szabó, is shot by Marcell Rév, is produced by Eszter Gyárfás and Viktória Petrányi, is scored by Csaba Kalotás.

It runs 105 minutes.

Ádám Császi directed his next feature Three Thousand Numbered Pieces [Háromezer számozott darab] in 2022.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 12,854

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LAND OF STORMS (Viharsarok) – Trailer (youtube.com)