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ASTRA 2022

Review: Holy Dilemma

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- A Catholic priest has to choose between vocation and family in Julianna Ugrin and Márton Vízkelety’s compelling documentary

Review: Holy Dilemma

Holy Dilemma [+see also:
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, a documentary feature by Hungarian directorial duo Julianna Ugrin and Márton Vízkelety, has recently been screened in the Central and Eastern Europe competition of the 29th Astra Film Festival, Romania’s biggest and oldest documentary gathering. Telling the story of a Catholic priest in a Hungarian village, who hides a “secret” from his parishioners, the feature raises questions on faith, more or less arbitrary rules and hard choices.

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“It’s a good farmer who makes a good farm,” goes an Eastern European proverb, and it would be hard to find a better embodiment of this pearl of wisdom than Róbert (Robi for short) Polgár, a dedicated priest in the Hungarian village of Murakeresztur, near the border with Croatia. After nine years within the community and countless hours of service, the priest has made himself indispensable in the village (or at least in the churchgoing part of it). What most of the villagers do not know – or prefer not to talk about – is that the priest has three kids with Anett, a woman living in a neighbouring village, which is in stark contradiction with the compulsory celibacy vows of the Catholic Church. “When I am at church, I lie because I deny being a father. When I am at home, I lie because I deny being a priest,” says the protagonist, perfectly approximating the titular dilemma.

It would be hard to find a more compelling conflict than Robi’s. While for many priests, their occupation is just a job, for Robi, it seems it’s truly a vocation. He is deeply involved in the life of the community, and not only at the Sunday sermons, but also on the football pitch or at the youth camp, where we seem him passionately singing his love for God while accompanying himself with rather pleasing guitar-playing chops. When so many people living their busy lives choose to spend their Sunday morning in less God-pleasing ways, the priest succeeds in filling his church with villagers of all ages. And yet, hiding a very significant part of his life from the parishioners is not acceptable for him, and he wants to come clean.

The two directors receive impressive access to Robi’s life, as we seem him not only recounting the days when he first realised his attraction for Anett, but also putting his kids to bed and taking care of household chores. This access is so impressive that some viewers might initially think that he agreed to be the protagonist of a documentary so that he could have some leverage with his superiors in the Church. But this suspicion quickly fades away because Robi doesn’t seem to have a bad bone in his body, his only wish being to somehow resolve his unclear situation.

In one of its aspects, that of a man who cannot gain fulfilment in his life or vocation because of some external influence, Holy Dilemma is similar to another fascinating documentary shown at Astra, Iulian Manuel Ghervas and Adina Popescu’s Eagles from Ţaga [+see also:
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, where Mister Nelu, an elderly football trainer, is unable to make his team perform better in the Romanian championship. While Mister Nelu’s lack of resources is obvious, this is not the case for the protagonist in Holy Dilemma; it’s just that he has to make the hardest choice in his life in order to move on.

One of the most endearing aspects of Holy Dilemma is that the feature shows how effort and dedication can elicit the respect and attention of a community. He may not have observed a century-old, questionable rule upheld by the Catholic Church, but he is truly a role model and an achiever, and the audience will enjoy the 80 minutes they spend with him.

Holy Dilemma was produced by Eclipse Films (Hungary) and co-produced by Corso Film (Germany), with the support of HBO Max Central Europe.

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