Title: Hegyizene
Duration: 1h 15m
Country: Ungaria
Year: 2024
Balázs Szendőfi’s nature documentary about the Apuseni Mountains explores a region that remains in many ways a “blank spot,” both in terms of scientific research and public awareness. Located near Romania’s western border—and thus also close to Hungary—at the boundary between Partium and Transylvania, the range is traversed by numerous rivers, including the Berettyó, the Criș rivers, and the Arieș, within this 145-million-year-old mountain chain.
The landscape speaks to us through the narrator’s voice and, while presenting a fairytale-like wilderness, it also confronts us with the harsh and drastic ways in which we are destroying even the untouched nature of these inaccessible mountains, leaving less and less of it behind.