Going Underground: Margins, Dreams and Dark Spaces in Nimród Antal’s Kontroll (2003)

The chapter focuses on Nimrod Antal's Kontroll, a Hungarian film from 2003. By working with the concept of the urban uncanny, the chapter looks to sociologists such as Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin and Michel de Certeau to help in an original reading of the film, arguing that this seemingly escapist popular genre piece actually engages not only with domestic debates in Hungary about its future EU membership in the context of its traumatic communist legacy, but also with the psychological challenges of modern and contemporary urban living more universally after the economic crash of 2007/8. The setting in the Budapest underground network, it is argued, is therefore metaphorically rich, working on multiple levels, and dealing with key themes of identity and personal wellbeing.