My 20th Century

From Ildikó Enyedi this magical film spins a tale of twin girls, Dóra and Lili, who are born in 1880 Budapest on the same moment Thomas Edison presents his electric lightbulb to the world. The sisters are soon orphaned and separated in childhood, and follow different paths: one grows up to a naïvely idealistic, bomb-toting anarchist, the other a pampered, hedonistic courtesan who paths cross once again on the Orient Express on New Year s Eve 1899. Moving at a dizzy pace between Budapest, Hamburg, New York, Burma, Austria, Paris and Siberia, this is a film of dazzling beauty and acumen. It is a modernist fable, a fantasmagoria of scientific, political and sexual revolution and radicalism, the birth of cinema, and the joy of life. Shot in luminous monochrome by cinematographer Tibor Máthé, the multi-award-winning My 20th Century attempts to claim back from the century of genocide the wonder of existence in a constantly changing world. (Second Run)