danish films – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

THE SECRET WOMAN – Review by Susan Granger

September 3, 2026September 6, 2026 Susan Granger Barbara Topsøe-Rothenborg, claes bang, danish films, Natalie Wolfsberg Madueno, netflix, Pal Sverre Hagen, The Secret Woman, thriller

Netflix’s intriguing Danish psychological thriller The Secret Woman introduces a lady with amnesia who learns that she’s not only a missing heiress but also married and the mother of a young son. The story begins in Denmark as an adult female is climbing over the railing of a huge bridge with someone in pursuit; terrified, she jumps off, just as a cargo ship passes below. Cut to: Louise Andersen who runs a small café on the idyllic Norwegian island of Hidra with her novelist fiancé Joachim. Their peaceful life is shattered when a stranger appears, insisting that her real name is Helene, not Louise.

Reviews

FAMILIES LIKE OURS – Review by Susan Granger

June 16, 2025June 18, 2025 Susan Granger Amaryllis August, calamitous climate change, danish films, Esben Smed, Families Like Ours, miniseries, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Paprika Steen, Thomas Vinterberg

Set in the not-too-distant future, Thomas Vinterberg’s seven-episode miniseries “Families Like Ours” chronicles what happens when calamitous climate change forces six million Danish citizens to flee slowly encroaching sea water. Writer Bo Hr. Hansen mergers personal, plausible dilemmas with issues caused by the global disaster,. The series focuses on storytelling and performance without using elaborate special effects and technology; which involves shooting on-location and using only natural sound for an authentic cinematic experience.

Festivals Reviews

THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE (TIFF 2024) – Review by Liz Braun

September 16, 2024September 15, 2024 Liz Braun danish films, Frederikke Hoffmeier, Joachim Fjelstrup, Line Langebek Knudsen, Magnus Von Horn, Michal Dymek, The Girl with the Needle, TIFF 2024, Trine Dyrholm, Vic Carmen Sonne

Beautiful to look at and harrowing to watch, The Girl With The Needle is a drama set in Post WWI Denmark. Anchored on a true crime story of the era in Copenhagen, the film focuses on the lives of marginalized women in that city. The movie opens with a strange collage of faces, twisted and distorted in anguish, while haunting music heightens a sense of impending doom. The Girl With The Needle is technically superb, thematically despair-inducing and overall utterly engaging. File those seeming contradictions under “magic of cinema”.

Festivals Reviews

THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE (Melbourne IFF 2024) – Review by Nadine Whitney

August 26, 2024August 27, 2024 Nadine Whitney danish films, Line Langebek, Magnus Von Horn, Melbourne IFF 2024, The Girl with the Needle, Vic Carmen Sonne

Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle is based on a notorious true crime case in Denmark. von Horn and co-screenwriter Line Langebek use the horrors of the murders to reveal the greater social horrors that lead the disenfranchised to believe that they can give their unwanted (or unable to be cared for) babies a better life in a city already filled with widows, broken men, women, and children. Karoline, Peter, and even Dagmar are representative of those who keep sliding further and further as grist in a system where innocence and guilt are only moral absolutes when viewed from the outside.

Reviews

UNRULY – Review by Nadine Whitney

July 18, 2023July 20, 2023 Nadine Whitney Anders Heinrichsen, danish films, Emilie Kroyer Koppel, Jessica Dinnage, Malou Reymann, Sprogø Women’s Institute, Unruly

Danish writer/director Malou Reymann’s Unruly is a devasting film based on a corrective asylum that was set up for women in 1923 (and remained open until 1961) the Sprogø Women’s Institute. Although it was seen as a progressive place to foster “defective girls” until they are ready to be reintroduced into public life, it was in fact used as a warning for young women to remain morally acceptable in Danish society or face the consequences.

Reviews

GIRAFFE – Review by Leslie Combemale

March 23, 2023March 25, 2023 Leslie Combemale Anna Sofie Hartmann, Anna Sophie Hartmann, danish films, Giraffe, Jakob Gierszal, Lisa Love Kongsli

When my AWFJ editor assigned me Danish writer/director Anna Sophie Hartmann’s Giraffe to review, she had no way of knowing that only two years ago my parents sold our 1800s family farm to developers, who summarily plowed it and all the hundred-year-old trees down to make way for a new development. Ever since, I’ve been musing about place, memory, and belonging. Those subjects are exactly what are examined in Hartmann’s film. Like most viewers, I suspect, I watched it with a strange mix of dread, melancholy, acceptance and hope.

Festivals Reviews

TWICE COLONIZED (Sundance FF2023)- Review by Leslie Combemale

January 30, 2023February 5, 2023 Leslie Combemale aaju peter, artic, canada, danish films, documentaries, greenland, indigenous rights, inuit, lin alluna, Sundance FF2023

Lin Alluna’s documentary follows Greenlandic indigenous rights advocate AAju Peter as she reveals herself to viewers in authentic ways that are inspiring and engaging. She is, after all, just one woman, yet powerful enough to demand realignment and reconsideration of what roles we play in perpetuating colonial mentality. Peter said of herself, “We were born into straightjackets. In my own living, why am I continuing the mentality of straightjacket living?” Everyone could and should be asking the same question, as it relates to not only indigenous rights, but every aspect of how we exist together in society.

Festivals Reviews

ATTACHMENT (Tribeca 2022) – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

June 6, 2022June 13, 2022 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Attachment, danish films, Gabriel Bier Gislason, horror, Tribeca 2022

Steeped in Jewish folklore and strengthened even further by a superb supporting cast, Attachment is a perfect example of a film that is precisely aware of its own sense of scale; never too big, never too small, it is the right size film, the right size story, the right size characters and the right size emotional and visceral punch to carry the film from its first frames right through to its last. With no need for the whistles and bells of some of the horror genre’s more bombastic offerings, Attachment is a captivating, confident and deeply moving little miracle of a film.

Festivals Reviews

SPEAK NO EVIL (Sundance FF 2022) – Review by Lauren Anderson

January 24, 2022January 24, 2022 Lauren Anderson (Archived Contributor) Christian Tafdrup, danish films, Mads Tafdrup, Speak No Evil, sundance film festival 2022

Speak No Evil is a chilling Danish horror film programmed at Sundance 2022 that proves there is such a thing as being “too polite.” From writer and director Christian Tafdrup and co-writer Mads Tafdrup, Speak No Evil delivers satirically on cringe-worthy encounters to examine human nature through the horror lens.

Reviews

BREEDER – Review by Lauren Anderson

January 3, 2022January 8, 2022 Lauren Anderson (Archived Contributor) breeder, danish films, horror, Jens Dahl, Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen

Breeders is a horror/thriller that asks us to examine how far we’ll go to feed our vanity. A ruthless businesswoman abducts a young women in a gruesome bio-hacking experiment to reverse the aging process. But when Mia goes to investigate, she finds herself trapped, branded, and tortured in an underground medical facility funded by her husband. Directed by a man and written by a woman, Breeders presents an interesting female perspective. Is looking young really all that important? Moreover, what do the pressures of wanting a child do to a woman?

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