Friday, December 11 – 7pm

Hen

Narrative • Greece, Germany, Hungary • 2025
96 Minutes

Synopsis: “With great power comes great responsibility” — but what if the hero is just a hen? Escaping from a chicken farm, she finds refuge in the courtyard of a crumbling restaurant. There, she discovers love, confronts the pecking order, and fights to protect her eggs from a greedy owner. Her droll yet touching quest for motherhood mirrors the messy compromises and silent struggles of human lives.

After seeing Hen over the summer, almost every time a chicken comes up in our house, my wife and I can’t help but smile.

Co-Writer/Director György Pálfi may already be (in)famous for his grotesque and shocking 2006 cult classic Taxidermia, he takes a much more gentle approach here with Hen.  When an unnamed chicken escapes an industrial farm, she wanders from misadventure to misadventure. Narrowly missing death and danger in ways that you would never guess. Presented like a fairy tale, but the dangerous, Grimm ones, we consistently see the world from 16″ off the ground, and are presented a story as much about the human condition as the chicken one. 

A cross-production between Germany, Greece, and Hungary, the film got an honorable mention at Toronto International Film Festival. It has a 100% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and a 3.5 on Rotten Tomatoes.