Alan in Belfast: Hen – fresh and feathery perspective on a familiar human crisis (Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 22 May)

Over the weekend, I had to watch To Kill A Mockingbird in preparation for the recording of an upcoming episode of Banterflix. Harper Lee’s novel wasn’t part of my GCSE English Literature experience: Laurie Lee’s Cider with Rosie was the book we had to study. Like the original 1960 book, the 1962 film adaptation examines racial injustice in the American South through the eyes of a child. The mixture of naïve and old-beyond-her-years observation feels fresher than any adult procedural storytelling could have managed.

Reacting to the constraints on his normal mode of filmmaking in his home country of Hungary, György Pálfi’s new film Hen uses the perspective of a chicken. Born and reared in a factory farm environment, the unnamed avian escapologist takes advantage of an opportunity to flee from a lorry transporting hens to the next, likely final, stage of their journey from egg to plate. It’s the first of many breakouts, as the leghorn hen travels to her new home where she ‘flies the coop’ to explore the surroundings of a family-owned restaurant on the Greek coast.

Business isn’t good and the owner’s daughter’s boyfriend decides to diversify their income with people smuggling. Despite the feathery perspective, Pálfi boldly makes the hen complicit in events that will shock but not surprise audiences.

The lead role is played by eight chickens: Anett, Enci, Enikő, Eszti, Eti, Feri, Nóra and Szandi. You can find out more about their jumping and running skills in a Guardian interview with Pálfi. The performance of the hens on screen are always real, never CGIed, though their human handler is magicked out of some footage.

What starts out as an almost flippant film about factory farming, switches to tell a somewhat familiar tale of human trafficking. A novel depiction, but hardly a new story? Yet the fresh perspective remains vivid in my mind days after the preview screening.

The tale of a hen determined to break free from her own captors, who stows away and witnesses terrible things along her journey. The parallels are subtle yet significant with the hopes and experiences of the people we briefly see being moved around ‘like animals’.

Hen is being screened in Queen’s Film Theatre from Friday 22 May.