This enchanting curio from Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi follows estranged twins whose divergent life paths collide on New Year's Eve 1899.
In 1880, at the precise moment that Thomas Edison is captivating an audience with his groundbreaking invention—the lightbulb—twin girls are born on the streets of Budapest. In a tragic twist of fate, sisters Dóra and Lili (both played by Dorota Segda) are separated at birth, and will not reunite until New Year's Eve 1899, when their paths fatefully cross once again, aboard the Orient Express.
Dóra, reclining in the opulence of first class, has transformed herself into a glamorous conwoman, cruising her way through the upper echelons of society one man at a time. Meanwhile Lili, fuelled by revolutionary fervour, has decided violence is the only route to a fairer society. With a bomb hidden beneath her skirt, she plans to assassinate a powerful politician—but might an encounter with her long lost sister set a different future in motion?
Ildikó Enyedi’s Cannes Camera d’Or-winning debut feature weaves a fantastical counter-historical narrative while also offering a fascinating study of two young women finding very different ways to survive in an unequal world. Dreamlike and engrossing, My Twentieth Century offers a spellbinding invitation to ponder the intricate threads of fate and identity that bind us together across time and circumstance.
- Director: Ildikó Enyedi
- Cast: Dorota Segda, Oleg Yankovskiy, Paulus Manker
- Language: Hungarian with English subtitles
A Time and a Place—Invisible Women present a season of coming of age films by women filmmakers, inspired by Bradford’s diasporic past
Bradford is famously defined by a rich history of migration. With more than a third of its population aged under 25, it’s also often described as the UK’s youngest city.
For the Year of Culture, archive activist feminist collective Invisible Women, have curated a season of coming of age films which draw inspiration from Bradford’s story of youth and diaspora. A Time and a Place is inspired by the many nationalities who have called this city home over the past century - from the German, Hungarian and Ukrainian communities who arrived in the aftermath of war and persecution, to the Irish and Pakistani migrant workers who played such an important role in our industrial heritage.
Although diverse in perspective and style, these films (all directed and written by women) are fundamentally connected by their empathy for the emotional rollercoaster which comes with navigating early adulthood. Both Mädchen in Uniform (1931) and Hush-A-Bye Baby (1989) set school girl romance in opposition to state oppression, albeit within very different contexts—fascist Germany and Troubles-era Northern Ireland. The relationship between mothers and their children is central to both Kira Muratova’s The Long Farewell (1971), set in Soviet-era Ukraine, and Fawzia Mirza’s The Queen of My Dreams (2023), in which a queer Canadian woman reconnects with her Pakistani heritage. Finally, Ildikó Enyedi’s bewitching My Twentieth Century (1989) presents a literally explosive story of political and personal awakening, set in turn of the century Hungary.