Cain's Children

In 1984, Pali, Jószef and Zsolt, three boys convicted of homicide, were filmed in communist Hungary’s most barbaric youth detention center. Thirty years later, filmmaker Marcell Gerö decided to find out what had become of the plans they had made back then. His visits to Zsolt’s mother and home village reveal the indignities he suffered as a child. He is now living in a psychiatric ward. Jószef, or Gabesz as he is now known, was 14 when he stabbed a teacher in self-defense. Now he’s a drifter and an absent father. Pali was 15 when he was sentenced to 13 years for shooting his father to death. Pali’s mother was always telling him that he was no good, and now his young daughter Valéria gets the same treatment from her stepsisters and grandmother. In probing conversations with Pali, Gabesz and Zsolt – filmed in close-up – the director assesses the pitiful sum total of their failed lives, while also making a connection between where they grew up and where they ended up. The unobtrusive visual symbolism and sparingly used music add a poetic layer to the whole.