The Guilty

PAST FILM SCREENING

January 9 – 2PM + 7:30PM

Denmark, 2018 – Rated: 14A – 85 minutes
Danish with English subtitles
Directed by Gustav Möller
Cast: Jakob Cedergren, Jessica Dinnage, Omar Shargawi, Johan Olsen and Jakob Ulrik Lohmann

Police officer Asger Holm (Cedergren) has been demoted to desk work after some initially unexplained incident. He’s been working as an emergency phone dispatcher for Denmark’s version of 911, and as the movie opens, he’s wrapping up his last day on the job. Tomorrow he’ll face an inquiry about the mysterious incident, after which he expects to be back on the street with his partner.

Then Holm takes a call from a frightened woman named Iben (Jessica Dinnage, conveying an impressive array of emotion with just her voice), who says she’s been kidnapped, and is being driven by her captor to some unknown location. Holm scrambles, trying to help a police car pull over the van Iben is in before things can go too far. Then the call drops. Unable to get hold of Iben again, he instead tracks down the woman’s 6-year-old daughter, who tells him her father was the kidnapper. With nothing but a phone and computer at his disposal, Holm becomes a man obsessed, determined to rescue Iben.

“Möller squeezes every drop of tension out of the concept, and then finds ways to suck the air from your lungs again.”
—Brent McKnight of Seattle Times