Winner, Golden Alexander for Best Film, Thessaloniki International Film Festival
A tense and intricately shot drama, writer/director Tobias Lindholm’s solo debut is a powerful and intensely watchable film as it tackles the high-pressure negotiations over a hijacked ship. Lindholm wrote for the award-winning Danish TV series Borgen, as well as scripting Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt, while with Michael Noer he co-directed the tough prison drama R.
The film opens with simple sequences of the ship’s cook Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk) going about his work, but never actually shows the hijacking of the Rozen, a cargo ship in the Indian Ocean, instead skipping two days forward to see CEO Peter (Søren Malling) first discover his company’s vessel has been hijacked. Over the coming weeks Peter has to haggle with translator Omar (Abdihakin Asgar), while on board the Rozen Mikkel and his fellow shipmates are locked below decks and start to lose hope that they will ever escape alive.
Pilou Asbæk (who starred in R) is moving and memorable as the genial chef whose sanity starts to crack, while equally fine is Søren Malling as the shrewd, calm and professional businessman who feels he must take responsibility for the situation, but is not fully prepared for haggling over men’s lives.
Mark Adams, Screen International
