Echoes of Dogme 95, nerve-jangling narrative twists and family secrets are the key words for this dramedy by Danish director Mads Mengel that swept the Best Director and the Special Jury Prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. A family gathering is disrupted by screen grande dame Trine Dyrholm and turns into unwanted therapy.

It was supposed to be a quiet family get-together at a seaside hotel. Karl and his wife Emilie wanted to gather their nearest and dearest to announce the name of their newborn, but they didn’t expect Karl’s mother, Vibeke, to turn up after so many years. Mother and son haven’t spoken in years, but his sister Rikke has stayed close with the impulsive Vibeke. Awkward toasts, eyerolls, paranoia, splashes in the pool – and only an hour has passed. As the family spends time together again, Karl’s life, the life he wanted, loses its façade, and it becomes ever more obvious that everything behind it has been cracked ages ago.

The feature debut by Mengel is an uncomfortable, dark, but at the same time surprisingly human comedy about family, guilt and the inability to forgive. The shaky camera, invasive close-ups, and the tension that builds with every polite porcelain-lined smile lend the film a documentary nerve and evoke the work of other Danish masters. This is not just a merciless exercise in family psychodrama – beneath its grotesque and absurdly funny layers, an intensely human yearning for recognition, closeness and forgiveness gradually unfolds. Vibeke, played by the outstanding Danish actress Dyrholm, is neither victim nor villain, and it is precisely in this moral quagmire that is the greatest strength of this film.