Bille August, the director of TWIST AND SHOUT (1986), the most commercially successful Danish film ever, followed that teen drama with this Swedish-Danish coproduction set in the 1890s and starring Max von Sydow as an impoverished Swedish widower who moves to Bornholm, a Danish island in
the Baltic, hoping to improve his lot in life. He takes along his seven-year-old son, Hvenegaard, but instead of finding a better life, they are reduced to virtual slavery. A grim story of deprived and depraved humanity unfolds, focusing on both the oppressed and the oppressors. An Oscar winner
for Best Foreign Film, this is an often brutal tale which is boosted by a powerful perfo...
Released:
1987
Rated:
PG-13
Length:
160 mins