Regia / Direction: Joaquim Trier
Interpreti / Cast: Eili Harboe, Okay Kaya, Henrik Rafaelsen, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Grethe Eltervåg
Produzione / Producer Company: Motlys, Film i Vast, Le Pacte
Distribuzione / Distributor (Italia): Teodora Film
Thelma recevied a severely rigid Christian education: when she finally faces the men’s world, the impact is complicated. After going through a violent apparently epilectic crisis, Thelma is approached by beautiful and easy-going Anja, who helps her interacting with other guys of her same age.
Joaquim Trier’s landing to supernatural is not unexpected. Even if Thelma shows pretty soon that something strange is hiding under the script pages, addressed topics are the ones Trier loves the most.
Starting with Thelma’s difficult adolescence and integration into society, as she grew up in such isolation to make every approach with other human beings a gamble, based on a fragile equilibrium. If the creepy beginning is not an enough to warn you, the environment surrounding Thelma will do the rest: parents blinded by faith, alienating schools, teenagers capable of unbelievable cruelties. Guilt and free will mix up and collide against each other, in a triumph of willingness that leaves without words: definitive release of sensations, autodetermination or legitimacy of omnipotence?
An epilog that is as fascinating as the brief and devastating flashbacks opening windows on Thelma’s family’s painful past, leaving the viewer with a sense of insecurity that lasts way beyond end of vision.
Joachim Trier (Copenaghen, 1 March 1974) is a Danish director who debuted in 2006 with Reprise, that brought him several awards. In 2011 he participated in Festival de Cannes’s Un Certain Regarde section with Oslo, 31.august, based on the novel Fuoco Fatuo by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. The same film has been selected among Norwegian films proposed for Oscar for best foreing language film and triumphed at Stockolm Film Fest. In 2015 he participated in Festival de Cannes with Louder than bombs.
