When Csaba Bollok first encountered Maria Varga, she was scrounging just as her character does in Bollok’s powerful and moving tale of a preteen girl bound for a life of poverty and misery. In a gloomy Romanian mining town, Iska’s daily struggle for survival ? between her alcoholic parents, abusive foreman, and mine workers ? is tracked as we see her fierce instincts juxtaposed against moments where her fragility is made clear. When human traffickers loom in the final act, the underlying danger of Europe’s fringe comes to the fore. Varga’s story, however, has a considerably happier ending, as Bollok explains: “Since the making of this movie, [her sister] has been living with our family, in Budapest. Maria had also been living with us, but at the age of 15, she decided to go back to the mining town where she grew up, and where once I found her on the streets.”