Daniel

The film seen the most at Danish theaters last year is a driven kidnapping drama portraying the freelance photographer Daniel Rye’s 13 months of captivity with ISIS in Syria.

In the year 2013, the former elite gymnast Daniel Rye (Esben Smed) travels to Syria with the purpose of photographing daily life in the shadow of the Civil War. Alone, he quickly runs into problems and is taken prisoner by a group of brutal men. What follows is a long hell, where physical and psychological torture are part of daily life. At the same time his family works on gathering enormous sums of money that the kidnappers demand. Daniel is based on Puk Damsgård’s best-selling book and skillfully portrays the complexity of Daniel Rye and the fate of his relatives, where the individual-based perspective clashes with the guidelines of international politics.

• Tobias Åkesson