How an inventive director made a film with a hen as its heroine

Why did the hen cross the road?

For freedom, adventure and meaning.

The black-coloured hen with a crimson comb and piercing yellow eyes flees the coop at first chance. Later found and tended to by an elderly man, the hen produces a series of eggs that are inevitably taken away. The hen uses its bird brain to figure out an escape plan. It bears witness to an immigrant trafficking racket. It encounters compassion and cruelty in equal measure.

This avian drama with the hen as the heroine is achieved without computer-generated effects, an explanatory voiceover or any kind of anthropomorphising. Rather, Gyorgy Palfi’s Hen uses filmmaking tools – intuitive camerawork, suggestive editing, judicious placement of music – to craft a parable that’s both delightful and thoughtful.

“There’s strategic political and social stuff happening in the film, but it’s covered by this beautiful and sweet chicken story,” Palfi told Scroll. “Audiences mostly laugh but then they understand the movie. This is a storytelling trick in a good way.”

Hen is available on BookMyShow Stream. The screenplay, by Palfi and Zsofia Ruttkay, uses the hen to map the amoral movement of people and livestock for profit.

The Greek-language film follows the unnamed hen on its journey from a poultry factory to a village where a restaurant...

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