Explanation for Everything

Under intense pressure from home and school to pass his graduation exams, Budapest high school senior Abel finds himself distracted and ultimately derailed by his own nerves as well as his crush on a fellow classmate. However, the simmering anxieties of teenagehood boil over into something far greater than Abel ever could have intended when a minor confrontation between the boy and a teacher becomes a talking point in an escalating generational and political conflict. Gábor Reisz’s scintillating drama keeps a firm grip on its audience as it unfolds an intricately structured screenplay that’s as tuned in to tiny gestures between people as it is to the grand statements about a contemporary climate in which we are often encouraged to take definitive sides. While Explanation for Everything is specific in its portrait of a contemporary Hungary wrestling with its own political past and nationalist legacy, its diagnoses are universally relevant, and endlessly compelling.