News

"Why did you run away like that?" Picturehouse in the UK has revealed an official UK trailer for a Danish dark drama titled Wildland, marking the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Jeanette Nordahl. This first premiered at last year's Berlin Film Festival and also opened in Denmark last year, and is arriving in the UK and US starting in August this year. Ida moves in with her aunt and cousins after the tragic death of her mother in a car accident. The home is filled with love, but outside of the home, the family leads a violent and criminal life. Described as "an enthralling, brooding and utterly gripping thriller that packs a powerful emotional punch." This almost seems like a Danish take on the iconic Australian crime family film Animal Kingdom. Starring Sandra Guldberg Kampp as Ida, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Joachim Fjelstrup, Elliott Crosset Hove, Besir Zeciri, and Carla Philip Røder.

After the sudden death of her mother, an introverted teenager is taken in by an estranged female relative, who turns out to be the matriarch of a dangerous criminal family. If the essential logline of Danish director Jeanette Nordahl’s quietly tense debut “Wildland” sounds more than a little familiar, perhaps the same thought occurred to those who titled it for the international market: Though it goes by “Kød & Blod (Flesh and Blood)” at home, its English-language moniker is all but a synonym for David Michôd’s similarly premised “Animal Kingdom.” That’s not a bad film to resemble in any capacity, though Nordahl’s study of a frail adolescent psyche plunged into a corrupt household has its own sense of ticking dread.

That’s thanks in large part to a key difference from the 2010 film: the protagonist is a girl, 17-year-old Ida, whose desires and vulnerabilities shift the stakes of this hothouse drama.