IFFR 2014

Nils Malmros

Jonas and Agnete commit to one another while still at school. As others shyly experiment with first love and desire and make tacit attempts at more serious forms of togetherness, they actually try to make their relationship work, hard as it is. A semi-official, 1960s-Viborg-set sequel to Tree of Knowledge.

Signals: Nils Malmros

Aching Hearts

A film about filmmaking, and a portrait of Malmros's centre of the world: Århus. Also a trenchant look at 1970s Denmark - surface permissiveness offset by deeply-seated suspicion against any real kind of political liberty. A comedy, a melodrama and a realist exposé all rolled into one.

Århus by Night

Malmros's only film not rooted in his own life experiences, but based on a novel - Jørgen-Frantz Jacobsen's eponymous classic. A visually splendid, wryly ironic melodrama about love, marriage, desire, rumour, hypocrisy and promiscuity, set in the 18th century with a two-time pastor's widow protagonist.

Barbara

Mette is sixteen and driving her dad mad - partly with jealousy. A head-first dive into the twisted realms of hebephilia as a study of intertwined confusions - of a daughter discovering her sexuality, and of a father having to deal with the feeling of being at once too old, yet not old at all.

Beauty and the Beast

A film in three movements about boys growing (but not necessarily maturing) into men. From getting a basic notion of it, through first personal experiences to finally finding a certain sense of sexual freedom - with all the responsibilities and pain this brings.

Boys

Young Mads wants to throw a Christmas party - which might include things counter to the season's spirit. A fable on compromises and illusions.

Christmas by Your Friends

Malmros' father Richard was a famous neurosurgeon who became embroiled in a scandal when it became public that, during the German occupation of Denmark, he had used a radiocontrast agent that put hundreds of people at risk of deadly liver cancer. A brilliant essay on desperate measures and guilt.

Facing the Truth

Scenes from the schoolyard. Lars Ole is in love with Inger, who's going steady with his friend Hanse. When the latter does something stupid, Lars Ole does something mean. Both pay, but in very different ways. Malmros's international breakthrough: his first vision of the world in a drop of water.

Lars Ole 5.C

Scenes from the life of Kirsten, from her teenage days to early adulthood. How she discovers sex and men; how one guy after another is a disappointment; how her life turns into a lukewarm hell of depression and despair. A counterpart to Sorrow and Joy; Kirsten is modelled on Malmros's wife.

Pain of Love

When filmmaker Johannes returns from a lecture one evening, he finds the house in mourning and terror: his wife has killed their baby. A meditation on the limits of human law and the infinite possibilities of kindness and understanding, and a Protestant melodrama on the subject of grace.

Sorrow and Joy

Late-1950s Århus. Elin already knows more about love than other boys and girls in her class - which puzzles/attracts the former and makes the latter anxious, jealous and angry. A study of teenage angst and desire in a series of perfectly shaped anecdotes. A prime example for Malmros's poetics of humility.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025