Kicsi Valaki (Little Someone) is the debut film by artist Dóra Benyó, in which she combines homemade videos and re-enactments into a short artistic documentary. As the camera moves across the painted landscapes, extras reenact reports from Hungary’s former secret service—files once compiled on Benyó’s grandfather. Driven by a desire to visualize these reports for her grandmother, who, at the end of her life could no longer read, write, or speak, Benyó raises questions about how we relate to our history and its (un)knowability.
Dóra Benyó (1989, Budapest, HU) lives and works between The Hague and Brussels. Through her videos, performances, and paintings, she draws on her own genealogy to address themes of historical memory, censorship, and authority in Hungary during the Soviet era. She examines the impact of the Communist regime on her family dynamics and questions how this dictatorial past is processed within families, by individuals, and in society at large.