Peter Schröder Movies

Danish director Nils Malmros directs the drama At Kende Sandheden (Facing the Truth), based on the real-life story of his own father. In 1944 Nazi-occupied Denmark, surgeon Richard Malmros (Jens Albinus) performs a successful operation on a young boy, using the chemical Thorotrast for the X-ray procedure. Forty years later, the patient claims that the chemical was the cause of his cancer. The eldery Malmros and his son, Nils (Soren Ostergaard), investigate their case while a journalist starts up a scandal. Flashbacks reveal the details of Malmros' career and the reasons for his desicion to use the chemical. Shot in black-and-white, At Kende Sandheden premiered at the Norwegian International Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

In this drama, the story of the 1944 Alf Sjorberg film Torment is taken up many decades afterwards. In the original film, based on an enormously well-known book by Hans Scherfig, a sadistic schoolteacher is shown wreaking havoc in the lives of his charges, though he eventually dies in what appears to be a quite innocent way, by choking on a piece of candy. In this new film, the boys the schoolmaster tormented so badly are all grown up and have settled into their lives. Some are even quite successful. At a reunion, they recount how each of them was treated by this man whom all of them hated (shown in flashbacks), and it becomes clear that they organized to punish him. Eventually, it begins to appear that one of these boys arranged to poison him. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Based on the 1932 novel Mendel Philipsen and Son by Henri Nathansen, Sofie was adapted for the screen by celebrated actress Liv Ullmann, making her directorial debut. Beginning in Copenhagen during the late 1880s, Sofie (Karen-Lise Mynster) is a devoted Jewish daughter who falls in love with the Gentile painter Hojby (Jesper Christensen). Her parents, Semmy (Erland Josephson) and Frederikke (Ghita Nørby), don't approve of the relationship, so they encourage her to marry her mentally ill cousin, a Swedish shopkeeper named Jonas (Torben Zeller). She gives birth to a son, but their already loveless marriage becomes further complicated when Sofie develops an interest in her brother-in-law Gottleib (Stig Hoffmeyer). Jonas is inconsolable after the death of his mother (Kirsten Rolffes), so much so that Sofie has him institutionalized and takes over his business. Years later, Sofie returns to Copenhagen with her son to help her aging parents and attend an auction where she reunites with Hojby. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

In this gentle satire, a taciturn, peace-loving judge and father finds his comfortable life challenged by his exasperated wife, who tries to provoke some kind of response out of him by flaunting her long-term affair with his best friend. At the same time, his son has been arrested on a drug charge. Rather than provoking a catharsis in this thoroughly settled man, these crises provoke a serious case of psychosomatic hay fever. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Maria (Karina Skands) is an 18-year-old, late-blooming woman who has for years been a gifted violinist. She live in the slums of Copenhagen and has led a sheltered life often marked by poverty and cruelty. Due to her consuming musical passions -- fueled by the expectations of her overprotective father -- the beautiful Maria is unaware of her own attractiveness. She feels the first stirrings of love with Jonny (Ole Lemmeke), but she leaves him when he turns out to be a repressed homosexual. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

When their special place in the woods in threatened by an evil real estate developer, seven school kids put aside their differences to fight for the forest. They enlist the help of a human fairy queen to stop the proposed housing project. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

This detective story models its hero and complex plot on the private eyes made famous in the early 1930s by authors Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler: Sam Spade of The Maltese Falcon and Philip Marlowe. "The Reporter" (Michael Falch) is also tall, tough womanizer, and a loner with his own personal crusade to clean up a red light district in Copenhagen. After a part-time jazz pianist is murdered, the Reporter has evidence against the culprit in the form of a tape the murderer made with the pianist. Life gets complicated because the police are soon after him. Even though a bookstore owner generously gives the Reporter a handgun, the question is whether his hard-boiled character and sharp thinking will actually win out in the end, gun or no gun. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In a sexual and romantic drama of intrigue, lies, and gossip, a young woman enjoys both a husband and a lover for a long period of time, having children by both men, before her deception begins to fall apart. Elise (Ann-Mari Max Hansen) is an outgoing, happy woman married to Henry (Ole Ernst), the town doctor. Because of a mix-up one day, she finds herself first compromised and then romantically involved with William (Henning Jensen), a captain of the Dragoons. Elise is an amateur actress in local theatricals and loves to invent games with Henry which involve them sneaking off for a secret rendezvous now and again in another town. Her story is told from the viewpoint of the town vicar, who may not be such an innocent bystander as he first seems. Eventually, gossip begins to run rampant, and Elise's life heads for a radical change.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Based on a book by the popular children's author Ole Lund Kirkegaard, this is a whimsical tale of Ivan (Alex Svanbjerg), a little boy who fails at athletics and lags in his reading skills, occasioning jeers and abuse from his classmates -- they call him the "rubber Tarzan" when he cannot lift weights. (His father extols Tarzan to his young son as a symbol of manliness.) Ivan is alone until he makes friends with Ole (Otto Bandenburg), a kindly crane operator who understands Ivan's solitude and encourages him with the lesson that everyone has something at which they excel -- it is only a matter of discovering it. When that lesson starts sinking in, the change in Ivan may also mean a change in the way others look at him as well. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The major question in this routine drama about a love (or loveless?) triangle is "when is a choice between two lives not a choice at all?" Lene (Lotte Tarp) has been leading a crushingly humdrum existence as a mother and a wife. Her husband Steen (Peter Schroeder) has the standard male shortcomings and after several years of marriage, Lene has no wellspring inside, no zest for living. So when she meets Michael (George Bamford) from New York, she is attracted to him mainly by default. But her relationship with Michael is enough to make her question her marriage -- and maybe that was all she really needed. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi