‘Growing Down’ review: Father lies to protect his son in tense Hungarian debut

Dir. Balint Daniel Sos. Hungary. 2025. 85mins

Widower Sandor (Szabolcs Hajdu) grapples with a tricky ethical dilemma when he is the sole witness to a serious, potentially life-threatening accident involving his 12-year-old son Denes (Agoston Safrany) and Sari (Zonga Jakab-Aponyi), the daughter of his fiancee. Should he lie about what he saw, and protect his vulnerable child? Or tell the truth and risk a stint in a juvenile detention facility for the boy? This impressive, tautly-plotted feature debut from Balint Daniel Sos makes effective use of its lean running time; deftly building tension and showcasing terrific performances across the board, with youngster Safrany a stand out.

Striking enough to make its mark 

Sos cut his teeth as an advertising director and is one of the founding members of the directing collective Kinopravda. He has also directed several short films. His debut, which was shot largely in Budapest in atmospherically muted black and white, makes its premiere in Berlin’s new Perspectives competitive strand. It’s an auspicious first feature which is striking enough to make its mark in further festivals and could catch the eye of adventurous arthouse distributors or curated streaming platforms.

Sandor (or Sanyi to his close friends) has a lot riding on the first meeting between his girlfriend Klara (Anna Hay), Klara’s daughter Sari and his own two kids, Denes and his older brother Zsiga (Milan Zikkert). Sos favours an understated, allusive approach to storytelling, but we grasp enough to understand that Sanyi was hit hard by his wife’s death but is now daring to hope for a happier future. That future involves, ideally, the harmonious blending of two families. So the full punch up playing out in the car between his boys is a sub-optimal start to this crucial first step. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could just look normal today,” Sanyi mutters through his beard.

But Denes, who is clearly struggling with the idea of replacing his mother, is not the kind of child who can keep a lid on his pain and anger. After a rocky start, however, the day pans out unexpectedly well. Denes, plugged into his headphones and pretending not to listen, is gratified to hear Sari sticking up for him against his dismissive older brother. Giddy with relief and peppered with spots of light from a desultory, dust-covered mirror ball, Sanyi and Klara get jubilantly drunk together in the deserted bar owned by Sanyi’s oldest friend, Zoci (Zoltan Friedenthal).

The tone of the film shifts abruptly when, during a joint 12th birthday party for Denes and Sari, held at Klara’s house, Sari falls backwards into the empty swimming pool and suffers a severe head injury. Sanyi sees enough to know that his son was involved in the accident. And the score, excellent throughout, is particularly chilling and effective at this moment: an inexorable rising tone captures the tightening knot of choking panic as the gravity of the situation becomes horribly, unavoidably clear.

Sanyi knows enough about his son’s impulse control to suspect the worst. Tellingly, he doesn’t consider the possibility that Denes’s role in the incident might have been inadvertent. In a snap judgment made in the heat of the moment, Sanyi decides to withhold the truth about what he saw, knowing that the implications for his relationship and future happiness are grave, and coaches Denes on the lies he needs to tell when he is questioned about the accident. But lies are hard to sustain, and Denes, wrestling with guilt on top of other complex emotions, lashes out at his father. 

One of the things which is most interesting about Sos’s approach is that he is as concerned with the distance between the characters as he is in the moments of closeness. One of the film’s most powerful moments unfolds in a ski lift, with Sanyi watching helplessly as his son and his lover talk in the chair dangling 15 feet in front of him. It’s an elegant handling of a pivotal scene – a moment in which everything changes for all involved.