Banished by her husband and her village, Katalin Varga is left with no other choice than to set out on a quest to find the real father of her son, Orbán. Taking the boy with her, Katalin travels through the Carpathians where she decides to reopen a sinister chapter from her past and take revenge. The hunt leads her to a place, she prayed eleven years prior, she would never set foot in again.
For years, Katalin has been keeping a terrible secret. Hitchhiking with two men, she was brutally raped in the woods. Although she has kept silent about what happened, she has not forgotten, and her son Orbán serves as a living reminder. When her village discovers her secret, Katalin's husband Zsigmond rejects her. Taking Orbán with her, on the pretext of visiting his ailing grandmother, she sets out with horse-drawn wagon on a journey through the beautiful, otherworldly Carpathian mountains of Transylvania to seek revenge on the perpetrators whom she has not seen since the assault.
After their arrival in the village, Katalin encounters Gergely, one of the men involved in the crime, and luring him into a compromising situation, she explodes into a violent rage in which she murders him. Katalin next sets out to find Antal Borlan, the rapist, to mete out similar punishment, but before she can confront him Antal befriends Orbán, and Katalin is taken aback when she realises the man who violated her has not only charmed her son, but also has a wife, Etelka, and others who love him and depend on him.
In a mesmerising sequence when Katalin joins Antal and Etelka in their rowing boat on a lake, she tells them the awful story of the rape. We see Antal's nervous reactions as Katalin describes in great detail both the events and the resulting aftermath of his actions, without identifying him by name. At a certain point in her story her language unexpectedly changes into that of the folk-tale, with an eerie and unnerving effect.
Her choices have far reaching consequences for the people she meets and those she seeks out, but it is those who are innocent and unknowing who suffer the greatest impact from her terrible revenge and she is forced to consider that morality might not be as black and white as she had imagined. As hunter becomes hunted and Katalin's mission becomes ever more precarious, the atmosphere and tension gradually heighten until we realise that Katalin's journey is likely to be strictly one-way, for such is the inexorability of tragedy.
This mysterious, unusual and very beautiful film combines the elements of psychological thriller with social comment on punishment and justice. Set in the present day, yet as timeless and eternal as the mountains, forests and surrounding Transylvanian landscape, Katalin Varga is a captivating story, intricately woven around very traditional themes of revenge and redemption.
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