Peter Aalbæk Jensen Movies

Lukas Moodysson wrote and directed this disturbing and controversial allegorical drama. Eric (Björn Almroth) is a teenager who lives in a shabby flat with his father, Rickard (Thorsten Flinck). Eric spends most of his time holed up in his room, blaring industrial music in order to drown out what's going on around him. Eric has just cause to be a bit disturbed by his surroundings -- Rickard is an amateur filmmaker specializing in extreme sex videos, and he's taken over the living room, where his emotionally disturbed friend Geko (Goran Marjanovic) and a blank young woman named Tess (Sanna Bråding) are "starring" in his latest project. As shooting progresses over the course of several days, Rickard and his cast lose track of the outside world and become increasingly desensitized to their own decadence. As the sexual play becomes more and more extreme, edging into violence, Eric feels no choice but to intervene. Both celebrated and criticized for its unflinchingly explicit sexual content, Ett Hål I Mitt Hjärta (aka A Hole in My Heart) received its North American premier at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Set in early 19th-century Iceland, this moving drama pays tribute to the courage of a young woman who fought back against the sexual repression and misogyny of the times and paid for that fight with her life in a public execution, the last ever held in the country. The story begins as Agnes works as a servant for Richter, a local magistrate and representative of the Danish (the country that first colonized Iceland) government. Because Agnes bore a daughter out of wedlock (scuttlebutt said the father was the town priest) Richter considers her a tramp and therefore available. She is not a trollop though and successfully fends off his attempts to rape her. Her physical and emotional strength causes Richter to hate Agnes. Agnes' real troubles begin when she falls in love with Natan, a local herbalist who is called to help Richter's wife through a difficult birth. Unfortunately, she doesn't realize that the seductive Natan is secretly a thief who only seduces her to enable his brother and another successfully rob the Richter residence. After the theft, Agnes is sold to Natan. His farm is located in an isolated place and for a time, she is happy to be with him. Unfortunately, the herbs Natan ingests make him violent and during one struggle he dies. Agnes is accused of the death and executed. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This enormously controversial psychodrama-cum-horror film from Danish enfant terrible Lars von Trier charts the degeneration of a marriage into apocalyptic violence, chaos, and insanity following an unthinkable domestic tragedy. The film opens with a prologue. While they make love in their apartment on a snowy winter afternoon, a husband and wife known only as "He" and "She" (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) fail to keep an eye on their young toddler. In a horrific turn of events, the child wanders over to an open window, entranced by the snow cascading down, and falls two stories to his death. Von Trier then divides the remainder of the film into four chapters, beginning with "Grief." In that segment, the woman finishes a month's hospitalization, and accuses her husband of apathy over the child's death, but proceeds to take responsibility for it herself; he calmly and rationally guides her through this process. In the second segment, "Pain," she confesses to him that she's most terrified of their property in the forest, because she spent time with her son there over the preceding summer; as a form of therapy, he takes her to that locale on a wilderness retreat. She appears to grow more calm and rational over their first days in that milieu. Yet the recovery, it seems, was only illusory, and the subsequent two chapters, "Despair (Gynocide)" and "The Three Beggars," depict the woman's shocking and abrupt regression into unbridled insanity, culminating with grotesque sexual violence against herself, gruesome acts of destruction against her husband, and an apocalyptic climax. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

This Icelandic tale, loosely based on the real-life experiences of director Fridrik Fridriksson tells the saga of a boyhood spent in Iceland in the 1960's. Tomas loves the movies and is highly influenced by them. His parents prefer he go to loftier shows such as "King of Kings," but Tomas prefers the Roy Rogers' Saturday matinees. Much of his time is spent reenacting scenes from those Westerns. Tomas world is thrown into chaos after he is sent to a relative's farm for the summer and can no longer go to the movies. There he imagines the scenario for a genre thriller. The fantasy becomes reality as the boy must face a genuine tragedy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

With Breaking The Waves, director Lars von Trier fashions an often disturbing tale of the singular power of love. Bess (the Oscar-nominated Emily Watson) is a naïve, borderline simple young woman who lives in a Scottish coastal town ruled by the religious doctrine of its council of elders. Recovering from a mental breakdown caused by the death of her brother, Bess marries a rough yet compassionate and attentive oil rig worker named Jan (Stellan Skarsgård). For a brief time, the couple enjoys peaceful wedded bliss, with the worldly Jan introducing Bess to the mysteries of sex. Jan must soon return to his job on the rig, however, where he is paralyzed from the neck down in a freak accident. Bess' emotional trauma over Jan's injury turns into obsession as she prays to God for his recovery and offers to do anything to have her husband back whole. Jan, constantly medicated and profoundly depressed, asks Bess to have sex with other men and tell him about it, thinking this will allow her to return to a normal life. Bess, on the other hand, sees it as an expression of her devotion to Jan that even God won't be able to ignore. Bess' resultant downward spiral leads to a finale of both tragedy and spirituality. Breaking the Waves is widely regarded as one of the most distinctive European movies of the 1990s, marking von Trier's movement toward his influential Dogma 95 school of filmmaking, which emphasizes realistic situations of contemporary life, filmed without background music and with a hand-held, restlessly moving camera. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

A sister and brother must deal with their parents' divorce in this Danish family drama. It is set during the Berlin crisis in 1962. Carmen, the nervous one, and her brother Adrian, aka Babyface, lead happy lives. Their father is a ceramist, and their mother is an earth momma. After their pappa runs away with an apprentice, the family harmony is shattered. The devastated mother and her children move to a drafty old cottage in the country. The children are outcast by their new schoolmates. Carmen avoids them, but Adrian is bullied. He finally does find a friend, but the friendship is temporary. Adrian's teacher finally provides him the nurturance he craves. An electrical storm brings ominous developments to the little family. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The contradictions of America's simultaneous love and fear of violence go under the microscope in this drama from Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg. Dick (Jamie Bell) is a timid young man growing up in a mining town where he's been deemed to frail to work with the other men. Dick is given a toy gun by a girl who works in a dime store, and he becomes fascinated with the weapon -- especially when it becomes clear that the gun isn't a toy after all. Dick and a handful of other local misfits who are also interested in guns form a gang called "the Dandies," a band of self-styled pacifists who make it their policy to never use their weapons as they lead the town's young people by example. However, as their obsession with firearms grows, Dick and his fellow Dandies are approached by local police chief Krugsby (Bill Pullman), who asks them to look after Sebastian (Danso Gordon), the violent son of Dick's maid Clarabelle (Novella Nelson). At first, the Dandies see this as a challenge to bring Sebastian over to the cause of nonviolence, but soon his influence begins to impact Dick and his compatriots, with devastating results. Scripted by Lars von Trier, Dear Wendy received its North American premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This Danish film has a comic beginning and a tragic end as it follows a Danish man on his quest to find his biological father in Portugal. When Jan, a man in his thirties, suddenly discovers he is adopted he immediately sets out to find his birth parents. His mother, an ex-cabaret singer is not too hard to find. Together the two head off in a taxi to a small town in Portugal to search for dad. Upon arrival, the mother refuses to assist any further and locks herself in her hotel room. As Jan searches, he meets and falls in love with Constanca. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Set in a small fictional town in the U.S. during the 1930s, Lars von Trier's Dogville was filmed in a studio with a minimal set and features narration by John Hurt. On the run from a group of gangsters, Grace (Nicole Kidman) arrives in the small mining town of Dogville. Town philosopher Tom Edison (Paul Bettany) takes her in and strikes a deal with her: She'll work for the townsfolk in exchange for a safe place to hide; after two weeks the people will vote for her to either stay or go. Grace agrees to the terms and ends up meeting the locals, including the town doctor (Philip Baker Hall), shopkeeper (Lauren Bacall), and apple farmer (Stellan Skarsgård). Eventually, Grace's standing in the town takes a downward shift as the search for her intensifies. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Directed by R.D. Robb, the largely unreleased Don's Plum made headlines throughout the late '90s for featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, who, after scoring big with the success of Titanic, was enjoying the top spot on young Hollywood's A-list. The film stars DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire as two of several obnoxious rich kids whittling the night away at Don's Plum, a local diner. Shot in black-and-white and largely improvised, the kids speak candidly about women, sex, drugs, and the nuances of relationships -- if by "nuances" one means adultery, masturbation, bisexuality, and whatever shock-topics the moment may have called for. Maguire and DiCaprio claimed to have worked in Plum free of charge on the condition that it would not be made into a feature release, and promptly sued Robb for distribution rights after it was, indeed, stretched into a 90-minute film. Though the young actors successfully blocked Don's Plum from release among American and Canadian audiences, it was shown internationally, albeit without much success. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

Two people are brought together by a tragic accident in this emotional drama. Joachim (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Cecilie (Sonja Richter) are a couple in Copenhagen who've fallen deeply in love and have made plans to marry. One day, Joachim is severely injured in an auto accident when he's struck by a woman named Marie (Paprika Steen), leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. As fate would have it, the doctor put in charge of Joachim's care is Niels (Mads Mikkelsen), who happens to be Marie's husband. Joachim, deeply depressed since the accident, tells Cecilie to leave him and find someone else, but while she intends to stay with the man she loves, she finds it increasingly difficult to deal with his mood swings and frequent anger. Meanwhile, Marie, wracked with guilt over the accident, asks her husband to look after Cecilie, and as they spend more and more time together, they find themselves becoming increasingly attracted. Eventually, Cecilie and Niels become lovers, leaving them both to deal with their betrayal of the people they've sworn to stand by. Filmed following the austere guidelines of the Dogma 95 movement, Open Hearts received its North American premier at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival and was screened in competition at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Noted Icelandic filmmaker Fridrik Thor Fridriksson directs this darkly humorous tale about a man's descent into mental disease and self-destruction. Screenwriter Einar Mar Gudmundsson adapted the script from his book about the true story of his brother. Paul (Ingvar E. Sigurdsson) lives with his parents, dreams about being a painter, and struggles to court a young lass who is above his class status. Complaining of a pain "in the heart," he starts to exhibit bizarre, occasionally violent behavior -- until eventually his parents are forced to commit him. In the sanitarium, he encounters a number of colorful characters -- Vicktor (Bjorn Jorundur Fridbjornsson) thinks that he's Hitler, Peter (Hilmer Snaer Gudnason) took way too many drugs, and Oli Beatle (Baltasar Kormakur) believes that he wrote all of the Fab Four's sundry hits. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide