Shorta

“I can't breathe”, says Talib Ben Hassi repeatedly during the opening shot of this tense Danish thriller. The preceding events aren't shown. What counts is that the 19-year-old doesn’t survive his arrest and that means trouble.

Shorta (Arabic for ‘cops’) tags along with two policemen during the volatile day that follows. Going against orders, the gruff, racist old hand Andersen and his more progressive colleague Høyer are in the (fictional yet very real) deprived district of Svalegården. When the pressure cooker explodes, they only want one thing: to get out, preferably with their arrestee. Easier said than done.

Directors Anders Ølholm and Frederik Louis Hviid, who are both making their feature film debut, expertly turn up the tension whilst showing more and more of their lead characters’ complexity.