Charter

Charter is a love letter to all separated parents, signed by Amanda Kernell (Sami Blood, GFF 2017) as well as a captivating drama where a whole society condemns a person’s parenthood.

Alice (Ane Dahl Torp) gets a call from her son late one evening. He is upset, but hardly has time to say anything before the conversation is cut short. When Alice goes up to northern Sweden, she is taken aback by how well her bitter ex-husband (Sverrir Gudnason) has managed to turn the whole village and her children against her. Afraid of losing custody, Alice makes the desperate decision to bring the children with her away from the father on a charter trip to the Canary Islands. The children are skeptical, to say the least, about her increasingly desperate attempts to re-establish contact with them and claim her role as a mother. Kernell is a master at portraying people who make radical choices and the anguish found in hurting others when the intention is to be true to oneself.

Short film: The Midas Touch, dir: Jakob Márky. (only screening 4028, Fri Jan 31).

• Maja Kekonius