Beast

István Balogh, is not a rich farmer. He is a man who has total control over his wife, family and his slave. He does everything to guard the family image created by the rigid traditions on his farm in rural Hungary. The characters meet their tragic fate through their close but at the same time extreme relationships. This award winning short film has been inspired by articles, news items and memories of people who have survived such situations.

In Hungary we see the renaissance of “csicskáztatás”, a kind of modern-day slavery. Today we speak about the forced work of homeless people and fallen addicts lacking love and their will as well as the confiscation of their benefits and pensions.

In many cases slave-owners buy their victims cheap from special agents and then force them under inhuman circumstances to work and fully serve the whole family. The worker quickly becomes a slave, a “csicska”. A tragic consequence of this widespread phenomenon is that the acceptance of the slave by the family can mean his very survival.

In these archaic communities there is no clear distinction between the slave and the family members. These cruelly exploited people, unable to take part in everyday struggles for life, become second-class members of the community. Thousands of people are estimated living in slavery in Hungary ten years into the third millennium