Told entirely from the perspective of its avian protagonist, Hen follows a chicken who escapes an industrial farm only to find herself navigating the pecking order of a crumbling seaside restaurant in Greece.
The Garden Cinema View:
A thrilling oddity, a wonderful anomaly - Hen is the most surprising film of the year and half of our programming team's favourite of 2026. An anarchic smorgasbord of genres ranging from slapstick to drama to thriller, it combines the hilarious with the gut-wrenching, often - remarkably - within the very same scene. Beneath its faux-naïf facade lies an incisive commentary on humanity's innate malice, power dynamics and greed - a searing metaphor drawing the line between our mistreatment of animals and of each other.
The story is so engaging that the genius work of cinematographer Giorgos Karavelas and editor Réka Lemhényi only becomes apparent on a second viewing. This is cinema at its purest - screenplay, music, acting, and editing as a single instrument, perfectly tuned.
Featuring an all-Greek cast (and eight real-life Hungarian chickens) and featuring Greek music throughout, this is a Hungarian-Greek co-production born our of necessity. Enfant terrible György Pálfi (Hukkle, Taxidermia) has said that Viktor Orbán's production restrictions forced him to leave Hungary and think outside the box in order to continue creating. We couldn't be happier that he did.
