Hen follows one bird's flight from a factory farm into a crumbling restaurant courtyard, turning a small barnyard escape into a surprisingly full portrait of motherhood.
What is Hen about?
Escaping a chicken farm is only the opening move for the hen at the center of this Hungarian-German-Greek feature. Once she settles into the courtyard of a decaying restaurant, director Gyorgy Palfi traces how she carves out a place for herself among the yard's existing pecking order, forms an unlikely attachment, and then has to defend her eggs from an owner who sees the flock as inventory rather than family. The film keeps its scale small and its stakes personal, letting the courtyard stand in for a much larger set of pressures: territory, hierarchy and the instinct to protect what's yours against someone holding all the power. Yannis Kokiasmenos, Maria Diakopanagiotou and Argyris Pandazaras lead the human cast around the courtyard, giving the people in the hen's orbit enough weight to carry a story that is as much about compromise and quiet endurance as it is about a barnyard chase.
About the cast
The human cast is led by Yannis Kokiasmenos, Maria Diakopanagiotou and Argyris Pandazaras, Greek performers who give the people around the courtyard distinct, grounded personalities rather than broad caricatures. Director Gyorgy Palfi, the Hungarian filmmaker behind Hukkle and Taxidermia, leans on tone and behavior more than dialogue-heavy exposition, so the film's emotional weight rests on observation as much as on performance.
Context & significance
Hen sits inside a small but durable tradition of films that use farm animals to talk about very human pressures — hierarchy, scarcity, and the work of raising the next generation under a threat you can't out-argue. A Hungary-Germany-Greece co-production that premiered in the Platform program of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where it received an honorable mention, the film keeps its focus tight on one courtyard and one bird's-eye view of that struggle rather than building out a wider fantasy world, which is part of what gives its 96-minute runtime a grounded, almost fable-like weight.
Watching Hen on Ktime
Hen streams on K-Time with a free account login, with no subscription charge required to press play. The film includes Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, making this European feature fully accessible to Farsi-speaking viewers watching from anywhere in the diaspora.