Dir: Frelle Petersen | Denmark 2025
The ‘elderly’ are not in a class of their own. They are just like everyone else, but have survived, often well into their nineties, due to healthier lifestyles and a diet lower in pesticides and growth factors during the 1940-60s.
Often older people are often infantilised or viewed with disrespect or pity. But Home Sweet Home shows how these ordinary people once brought up families and ran businesses but are now reliant on complete strangers in performing the most intimate and personal tasks.
Frelle Peterson’s latest feature, a docudrama, looks at the tough realities of working in the Danish care sector. It’s a candid, ‘no holds barred’ expose that certainly tells it like it is – in no uncertain terms. But the crux here is the human factor. The elderly manage to remain in their own homes, offering them vital comfort and stability, all thanks to a system that provides a network of really kind and committed carers, who gain considerable job satisfaction in return, often bonding closely with those in their care .
Sofie (a really terrific Jette Sondergaard) is working with various clients and responding to their complex needs. It’s a demanding often unpleasant and psychologically testing job for the divorced, single parent who is juggling with caring for her little girl at home. Clearly she is still affected by the breakdown of her marriage and is having to share custody of her daughter. Frelle shows how important it is for carers to have a happy home life to be able to offer support in their taxing work, and how the life experience offered by those she cares for can be an unexpected and worthwhile benefit in a job that can be gruelling and fraught with seemingly unhelpful rules and regulations.
The award-winning Danish director, who won the Grand Prix at Tokyo for his his film Uncle (2019), also offers insight into the personal lives of Sofie’s charges. Not all are pleasant to deal with, on one occasion Sofie is driven to tears by one unpleasant daughter who accuses Sofie of mistreating her mother. Another shows the sudden death of Elsa, an engaging woman who has been coping with a stoma.
But there’s some humour too in a film that never takes its subject too gravely while offering the truthful reality of modern life in a deeply affecting way: Lorenz suffers a fall but asks Sofie to “please feed the birds” when she comes to his assistance. When the government cutbacks are announced in the care system, all the carers are, predictably, disappointed.
Frelle doesn’t opt for simplistic or or sensationalist approach to the narrative in this filmic, fascinating and thoughtful feature that reflects the importance of funding this increasingly vital care in the community. @MeredithTaylor
BERLINALE 2025 | PANORAMA