Seven years is a long stretch in a child's life. When Tibor went to prison his daughter Niki was five; by the time he walks out she is twelve, living with her grandparents, and not the kind of girl who waits for anyone's permission.
What is Wild Roots about?
Tibor has served his sentence and would rather leave the past sealed. He finds work, keeps his head down and tries to build something quiet for himself. Niki, meanwhile, has grown up hot-tempered and stubborn in her grandparents' house, and she decides, against their wishes, to track down the father she has not seen since she was small. When the two finally stand face to face, neither knows how to behave: he is wary, she is demanding, and both flare up fast. What follows is a halting sequence of approaches and retreats, as father and daughter test whether the years apart can actually be bridged or only acknowledged and lived with.
About the cast
Gusztáv Dietz and Zorka Horváth head the cast, with Éva Füsti Molnár, Balázs Galkó, Viktor Kassai, Zsuzsa Száger and Fruzsina Háda around them. The film rests on the friction between its two leads, and the writing gives them equal footing: the adult is not automatically wiser and the child is not automatically softer.
Context & significance
Wild Roots is a Hungarian and Slovak co-production from 2021, directed by Hajni Kis and running roughly ninety-four minutes. It sits within a Central European realist tradition that favours everyday settings, unglamorous locations and characters who express feeling through action rather than speech. The film is concerned with inheritance in the broadest sense: the temper Niki plainly shares with her father, the reputation that trails a released prisoner, and the question of whether a parent absent for most of a child's life has any claim on her at all.
Watching Wild Roots on Ktime
K-Time carries Wild Roots with a Persian dub, so the Hungarian dialogue is available in Farsi; Persian subtitles are not offered for this title. This page can be read without an account, but streaming the film itself requires signing in. The interface is in Farsi, made for Iranian viewers living abroad.