Hungry Man

This story of an unexpected encounter between a young boy and an injured foreigner somewhere in the Romanian wilderness is a parable of man’s freedom in modern society. The boy lives in a decaying village in the Danube delta. It is a landscape untouched by time and modern society. Director Philip Martin builds his compelling story using just three basic elements: children, an injured man, and the specific landscape and nature of the delta. Martin’s daring debut does not follow a classical sequence of events, but consciously seeks out a distinctive and original form of narration using non-actors, a skeleton crew, and no musical soundtrack. Nor is Martin in any hurry to introduce the main plot or the events that follow. He uses time to pull the viewer into the children’s frame of mind and the atmosphere of their everyday life. Nearly every shot “slows time without being boring”, which philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer calls one of the defining features of art. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)