'27' by Flóra Anna Buda: Film Review

Vassilis Kroustallis 24 November 2023

Hungarian Flóra Anna Buda is one of the emerging forces of the international independent scene, with films like 'Entropia' and her more recent one, '27'; a film that won the Palme d'Or for a Short Film at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Produced by MIYU Productions and Boddah, '27' details the adventures of 27-years-old Alice, who still lives with her parents; her birthday becomes a dreamy escape to the unknown after a bike accident.

Film Review (Vassilis Kroustallis):
Probably the film that Viktor Orbán wouldn’t want you to see - yet now, with both the Cannes Palme d’Or and the Annecy Cristal, everyone else wants to see it. Toned down from the more free-floating style of her previous ‘Entropia’, Flóra Anna Buda presents an almost realistic, documentarian portrait of a young woman of 27 (that’s her birthday) trapped inside a family life she no longer needs (accompanied by a rigid shot framing) and a fantasy life she can not yet fulfill. (Even her own sexual fantasies need police surveillance). A film bathed in pink and purple, with a few fauvist sequences of color splash thrown in for a good measure, it captures the existent, hallucinogenic but not defiantly spelled out queer nature of its main character. Intensive music and sound design make the piece a dance to sexual and personal freedom - and an exorcism to the ‘loser’ label that the Gen Z is here attached. A film that travels from scene to scene like a perfectly well-oiled bike; and ends with an agonizing act from the window view.