A feature film by Dorka Vermes
Places
Half Empty
A controversial love story between two lonely women in Orbán’s Hungary.
Logline
On the brink of Hungary’s most prestigious dog competition, Juli’s future is bound to her mother’s chihuahua breeding business. After falling for Noá, an older queer taxi driver, Juli’s reality begins to unravel — pulling her away from the only life she has ever known.
An absurd melodrama about a love built on lies that nonetheless remains true — and the slow erosion of two women who refuse, for a while, to choose between freedom and family.
Synopsis
Two lonely women.
The story begins in Budapest with Noá, who makes a living as an illegal taxi driver. One day, outside an animal hospital, Juli gets into her taxi with three sneezing chihuahuas. This is where the two women meet, and where they fall in love.
Each sees in the other something they desperately need — Juli the possibility of freedom, Noá the possibility of stability.
The spiral
A love built on lies that nonetheless remains true.
To satisfy her family while holding onto Noá, Juli begins to live a double life. Very soon it drags them both into an ever-deepening spiral of lies and increasingly extreme situations — until the growing erosion finally destroys their relationship altogether.
The two women
Juli — 30
Daughter of the kennel. Lives in her parents’ opulent, dog-hair-covered family house. Tracksuits and a fanny pack of treats. Beneath her competence, a permanent tension — the look of someone waiting to snap.
Wants
Freedom, a place of her own, to be loved without permission.
Fears
Being cut off from her family forever.
The two women
Noá — 40
Drifter of the ghetto district. Buzzcut, tattoos, a sublet shedding its plaster. Drives an unlicensed cab, sells Elf-Bars from the trunk, plays slot machines on her phone between calls. Abandoned by parents who moved to Germany without her.
Wants
Stability, a place that’s hers, someone who will not leave.
Fears
Bouncing forever, falling asleep alone in the dark.
The dynamic
“How love can be equally beautiful and painful — how it is possible for it to be founded on lies and still remain true.”
Dorka Vermes, Director
Magdolna negyed — the ghetto district
Noá’s apartment
A single open space, shabby yet romantic, where personality compensates for dinginess. Two rooms joined, plaster peeling, curbside finds. A neighbourhood of contradictions, criss-crossed every night by her unlicensed cab.
Affluent suburb, Budapest
Juli’s family house
Spacious yet barren, expensive but tasteless. Greenish floor tiles, a fluffy carpet before a black leather sofa, an LED-lit liquor cabinet, certificates and photos of medal-winning chihuahuas on every wall. A life she pays for with the cage she sleeps in.
The chihuahuas
Silent witnesses.
Uncanny companions.
The Hrabalian absurdity that loosens the severity of the drama and lets the story breathe.
Director’s statement
This film draws deeply from my personal experiences. At first glance it may seem this love is destroyed by external pressures — by circumstances and social expectations. But gradually it becomes clear that these obstacles are already internalized, living deep inside both characters, shaping their choices and their downfall.
The film is built on the contradictions of love. Even though Juli and Noá’s relationship is mostly built on lies and deception, their feelings and their connection are real. Depicting these paradoxes is the main point.
To achieve this we are further developing the script through improvisation. Dialogue and situations will be shaped around the actresses and by their performances — the only way to preserve the authenticity, honesty and originality of the story.
Although I focus on the intimate close-up of a relationship, the film also lets us sense the pulse of Viktor Orbán’s society in the background — the two women live under very different circumstances, but are both equally exposed to a system that already lives within them.
To mark the film’s tone, the weight of the Eastern European legacy is contrasted with a Hrabalian absurdity, easing the monochrome gloom the political backdrop might otherwise create.
Visual plan
A film about faces and
places — shot on film, in 4:3.
Close-ups are crucial — faces and the body as biography, observed with unflinching patience. The primary visual reference is Ulrich Seidl; alongside him, Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Red Rocket, and early Béla Tarr.
Team
Dorka Vermes
Director · Writer
Hungarian filmmaker and writer. Her debut feature Árni premiered to critical acclaim. A student of Béla Tarr’s film.factory program in Sarajevo, she makes character-driven films rooted in Eastern European reality, balancing weight with Hrabalian absurdity. Places Half Empty is her second feature.
Tamás Papp
Cinematographer
London-based cinematographer. Credits include Dune: Part Two and Project Hail Mary (virtual cinematography), developed through close collaboration with Greig Fraser. His work moves between large-format studio productions and intimate, character-driven storytelling.
Enea Gramo
Producer
Tirana-based producer, founder of Art Film sh.p.k. Previous productions include The Delegation and A Peaceful Sunday. Alumnus of EAVE, Rotterdam Producers Lab and ACE Mentoring EU. Places Half Empty marks his first Central European co-production.