Festivals: Places Half Empty (2025) by Dorka Vermes- Love on the Margins: Hiding, Hoping, and Heartbreak in Orbán’s Hungary
- dailyentertainment95
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Short Summary: Hidden Hearts, Empty Spaces
"Places Half Empty", directed by Dorka Vermes, is an intimate and socially-charged Hungarian drama immersing viewers in a queer romance caught in the crosshairs of authoritarian politics, familial pressures, and economic precarity. Set in contemporary Budapest, the story draws deeply from real experiences of exclusion and resilience under Hungary’s repressive climate, shaped by Viktor Orbán’s government. The film spotlights the struggle to find home and authenticity in a society that polices bodies, spaces, and affections.
About movie: https://www.cinelinkindustrydays.com/2025-cinelink-coproduction-market/coproduction-project-places-half-empty
Detailed Summary: Survival, Sanctuary, and Shifting Loyalties
Noá leads a transient existence in Budapest, juggling under-the-table cab gigs and fleeting hopes for stability. Her independence is guarded yet precarious, lived in a nearly empty sublet with boxes always ready, reflecting her readiness to move at a moment’s notice.
Meeting Juli, an affluent but emotionally stifled woman desperate to escape her domineering family, seems like a lifeline for both.
Their connection intensifies, but Juli’s refusal to confront her family’s homophobia means secrets and double lives: she fabricates an apartment and routine just to appease her parents, never bringing Noá fully into her world.
Noá endures the absurd situations with humor and patience, but the shadow of being hidden grows heavier. Juli’s divided loyalties stoke mutual anxiety—Noá fears Juli will never claim her publicly, while Juli dreads losing her family’s approval and financial security.
Their double life grows costlier. Juli works at the dog kennel to gain some independence, while Noá takes more risks behind the wheel, both straining under economic and emotional burdens.
When Juli’s mother delivers an ultimatum to choose family or authenticity, Juli wavers—her eventual confession that she cannot break away shatters the romance.
In the aftermath, Noá lets Juli go, choosing self-preservation. The closing scene finds Juli in her own apartment-cum-mini-kennel, physically independent but clinging to the same dependencies and patterns, unresolved and changed by love.
The narrative’s visual style—fragmented, handheld, close—mirrors the instability and layered realities of young Hungarians living between belonging and exile.
Director's Vision: Living Truth in Restless Frames
Dorka Vermes crafts a film that is less about “queerness” than about the lived, imperfect experience of love and survival when all space is policed or provisional.
The Hungarian context, Vermes insists, is not just a backdrop but a real force—politics shape every decision, every movement, every silence.
The film refuses melodrama and easy answers, presenting everyday acts of exclusion and adaptation with intimacy and nuance.
Vermes’s visual language is chaotic and immediate—long takes, natural light, handheld shots—inviting viewers to witness the complexities rather than resolve them.
Themes of human vulnerability, social aesthetic (from cabs to kennels), and “places between” reflect a generation’s determination to exist and love authentically, even as institutions erode around them.
Themes: The Weight of Secrets, The Geometry of Exclusion
Identity, belonging, and the search for “home” in a society hostile to difference: Both women embody the cost of hiding and the longing for sanctuary.
The narrative exposes how structural forces make intimacy strategic, risky, and precious.
Familial duty versus personal truth: Juli’s fear of losing her family and Noá’s hope for a public future clash, as each navigates the emotional economy of love versus security.
The script powerfully portrays how affection becomes a kind of resistance, and how the desire for acceptance fractures under pressure.
Economic precarity as a barrier to authentic life: Both heroines make risky, sometimes self-destructive choices just to carve out a tiny space for themselves.
Everyday details—the dogs, the cabs, the hidden apartments—reveal the exhausting work of maintaining a double existence.
Key Success Factors: Realism, Nuance, and Political Resonance
Brings to screen immediate, specific struggles for LGBTQ+ Hungarians living under Orbán: Love, work, and home are all politicized and unstable.
The film draws on lived experience among Budapest filmmakers who themselves organized in protest against governmental interference and censorship.
Vermes’s direction—supported by mentor Béla Tarr—gives the film a poetic yet unsentimental edge, using naturalistic performances and observational cinematography to break down barriers between artifice and lived reality.
The film’s atmosphere is both restless and inviting, compelling viewers to empathize with survival strategies and the daily absurdities of forbidden love.
Awards & Nominations: International Spotlight for a “Non-Place”
Places Half Empty won the 2025 Eurimages Co-Production Development Award at Sarajevo CineLink—a key recognition supporting daring voices in European cinema. Produced independently in defiance of Hungary’s government-backed film restrictions, it is already attracting festival interest and is often mentioned as a standout in the new wave of Central European LGBTQ+ and art-house cinema.
Critics Reception: Intimate, Political, and Brave
Variety describes the film as a “contentious and personal exploration of a queer relationship,” applauding its intimate focus and its clear-eyed perspective on repression and everyday resilience.
Hollywood Reporter and Cineuropa recognize its innovative approach, noting how the story never slips into victimhood, instead offering layered, human portraits full of humor and melancholy.
Industry coverage emphasizes the film’s balance of the absurd and the heartfelt, its inventive visuals, and its bold stand against artistic silence in Hungary.
Overall, critics view Places Half Empty as both a powerful love story and a vital snapshot of a generation fighting to live, love, and create under siege.
Reviews: Moving, Resonant, and Urgently Relevant
Festival professionals and preview audiences praise the film’s emotional honesty, especially its detailed, lived-in portrait of contradiction and courage.
Reviews point to Vermes’s grounded style, the chemistry between the leads, and the film’s refusal to settle for easy answers or symbolism.
Among LGBTQ+ and Eastern European critics, it is recognized for mapping out rare, authentic spaces for queer love onscreen—remarking on the humor, sadness, and hope that animate Noá and Juli’s world.
Sentiment is overwhelmingly positive for its raw, “slice-of-life” feel and the resonance of its message.
Release date on streaming: Not Yet Announced
As of August 2025, Places Half Empty is screening at international festivals, with streaming and theatrical release plans pending as part of continued festival and distribution negotiations.
Theatrical Release: Festival Debut and Touring
The film premiered to acclaim at the Sarajevo Film Festival in August 2025, is set for continued festival appearances, and will likely receive limited theatrical runs in European art-house cinemas before a broader digital release.
Why to recommend movie: Courage, Craft, and Unfiltered Love
Offers a rare, nuanced portrait of queer life and survival under a repressive government, grounded in real Budapest struggle and intimacy.
Explores the resilience, humor, and heartbreak behind hidden lives and forbidden relationships.
Dares to ask: What does home mean for those society leaves “half empty”?
Benefits from inventive cinematography, naturalistic acting, and a director personally invested in truthful representation and political courage.
Timely, necessary, and quietly radical—a must for lovers of world cinema, queer stories, and films about what it means to risk everything for love.
Movie Trend: Queer Melodrama Meets Social Realism
Places Half Empty exemplifies the current trend of blending urgent queer storytelling with grounded, lived-in realism—especially in Central and Eastern Europe, where young filmmakers stake out new territory amid political backlash.
Social Trend: Artistic Resistance and Authenticity Under Pressure
The film is part of a growing wave of art, activism, and queer representation that refuses silence or compromise, even as governments attempt to erase or marginalize non-normative identities. It stands as cinematic testimony to survival, creativity, and the forging of community in the gaps left by regressive policy.
Final Verdict: Unforgettable Love, Unyielding Voice
Places Half Empty is a potent, artful, and necessary film—unafraid to reveal the mess, joy, and complexity of wanting more than the world says you deserve. Through bruised humor, restless camerawork, and bold honesty, Dorka Vermes crafts one of the most urgent queer films of the year, honoring the power of everyday longing to resist and remake the meaning of “home.”
