Dir: Gustav Moller | Cast: Sidse Babett Knudsen, Dar Salim, Sebastian Bull | Denmark/Sweden/France. 2024. 99mins
One of the best films at Berlinale 2024 was this glacially unnerving psychological thriller from Swedsh director Gustav Moller (The Guilty). It stars Borgen’s Sidse Babett Knudsen as a dedicated prison guard who takes pride in her ethos of pastoral and rehabilitative care but finds herself out of her depth when taking on a new role in the high security wing where she becomes obsessed with one of the inmates, a vicious psychopath, serving time for murder. It soon emerges that Mikkel (Bull) has a connection to Eva and one that sees her taking risks and behaving in an increasingly unadvisable way towards him. In these unpredictable and oppressive surroundings the power base gradually shifts putting Eva and her colleagues in grave danger.
copyright Timo Kuismin
Moller and his co-writer Emil Nygaard Albertsen once craft a sinuous study of human evil that sees the prison environment is a challenging unpredictable one: an atmosphere of calm control can abruptly erupt into hostile and dangerous violence. Eva is made aware of this by her colleague (Dar Salim) who warns her about becoming too familiar with the inmates: “Some people are just beyond rehabilitation”. But Eva has another axe to grind and ignores his advice to her detriment in this robust and frightening character drama. @MeredithTaylor
BERLINALE | GOLDEN BEAR COMPETITION 2024
copyright Timo Kuismin