REVIEW: Silent Nights [2016]

“I live a very hard life” It’s extremely difficult for me to blindly accept a film like Aske Bang‘s Silent Nights on faith. The idea that someone can do bad things—no matter how good he/she is at heart—and continuously be rewarded is a tough sell. But that’s exactly what this look at immigration through a charitable Danish lens attempts. A man may be a saint, but that doesn’t excuse thieving, adultery, or lying with ease. I understand the message comes down to “hard living” and “impossible decisions,” but the film’s…

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TIFF16 REVIEW: I blodet [In the Blood] [2016]

“We’re gonna have a great summer” If forty’s the new thirty, twenty-three can easily become the new thirteen. I think first-time director Rasmus Hiesterberg would agree as the man behind screenplays for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Swedish) and A Royal Affair delves into a med student’s coming-of-age drama in I blodet [In the Blood]. What’s often reserved for younger children moving towards adolescence, eighteen at the oldest shifting from high school to college, the genre truthfully fits any period in one’s life if his/her maturity hasn’t quite sunk…

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