R

Rosebud

Michael Noer, Tobias Lindholm/Denmark/2010/90 min/tbc/Danish with English subtitles

Set in a real male prison just outside of Copenhagen, Michael Noer and Tobias Lindholm’s brutal penitentiary drama R follows two prisoners, Rune (Pilou Asbaek) and Rashid (Dulfikar Al-Jabouri), as they attempt to climb the exclusive social ladder that exists behind the bars of a notorious Danish jail.

Already being compared to Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, R is a bleak and unforgiving look at the realities of life inside the prison system, and the lengths the prisoners deemed the least popular will go to in order to survive their sentence and make it out of jail unscathed. Featuring scenes of extreme and graphic depictions of violence, it’s the feeling of the film’s constant threat of assault and inescapable sense of tension that gives R its realistic and gritty edge. Rife with themes of claustrophobia, racial tension, betrayal and revenge, this film manages to be both believable and devastating, as the price of success and greed leads to tragic consequences. Superbly acted, with a number of ex-cons as prison yard extras, Noer and Lindholm have created a dark and low-key study of the rise and fall of two naive inmates locked in a place where the value of human life is less than nothing.

Showing @ Filmhouse, 19^th of June, 20:45, 20^th of June, 21:00