Pleasant Days

Happy days are here again for Peter, who’s just out of prison. Returning to his hometown, he finds his sister has become the proud (but surrogate) mother of a baby boy. There’s just one problem: the wild Maya is the real mother of the child and wants him back. Peter soon falls in love with Maya and is torn between her and his manipulative sister while tensions between the two women reach a peak. Peter has to take sides and sees the happiness that seemed within his grasp vanish into thin air.Mundruczó and his young cast and crew made a realistic, raw film about three kids who want to escape from smalltown life in this case a Hungarian town, but it could be anywhere in the western world. In an impressive and sombre way, the film sketches the contradictions in the motives, the extremities of the manipulations, and the helplessness in the actions of the adolescents.Under the ironic title Pleasant Days, this intense film has already caused a stir at several festivals. Yet the young director was not entirely satisfied with the result. Several additional scenes were shot and they returned to the cutting table. This new, slightly shorter version is having its première in Rotterdam.