Before It Ends
Oscar®-winning director Anders Walter (Helium) highlights a sensitive chapter in Denmark’s history near the end of World War II about a headmaster torn between helping the stranded refugees assigned to his boarding school or adhering to his city’s anti-German sentiment.
The fragility of morality lies at the heart of Anders Walter's Before It Ends. Following Jakob, a headmaster at a boys boarding school in Ryslinge, Denmark in April 1945, the imminent Nazi occupation finally rears its ugly, fascistic head one day and Jakob is forcibly dictated to convert the school he pridefully leads into a shelter for German refugees. Jakob, his family, and close associates are thrust into roles well beyond their asking, and when a brutal wave of diphtheria plagues the unwelcome visitors, an impulsive act of humanity by Jakob ultimately leads to the swift unfurling of the town's populace, pitting once-peaceful neighbors against one another in a battle of muddied motives. Walter's diffused direction does plenty in obfuscating where exactly the “right” and “wrong” lie, and the lack of moral clarity Walter presents may further frustrate in a world currently pained by both bloodsheds in Gaza and Ukraine. But with the film’s setting in history as an example, freedom from conflict can always be around the corner, in spite of current bleakness. If anything, the film is a harsh reminder of the work that must still be done in preventing wide-scale atrocities from occurring again in the future. Walter's cryptic messaging perhaps asks of us not to raise our pitchforks at those we're closest to first, but instead to read beyond the room and reorient our collective energy to those who really pull us apart.
—Dannzel Escobar
- Original Language Title: Når befrielsen kommer
- Director: Anders Walter
- Principal Cast: Pilou Asbæk, Lasse Peter Larsen, Katrine Greis-Rosenthal, Morten Hee Andersen, Peter Kurth
- Country: Denmark
- Year: 2023
- Running Time: 90 min.
- Producer: Miriam Noergaard, Mette Hoest Hansen, Tomas Radoor
- Screenplay: Anders Walter
- Cinematographers: Rasmus Heise
- Editors: Lars Wissing
- Music: Johan Söderqvist
- Website: Official Film Website
- Awards: Santa Barbara Film Festival 2024 (Best Nordic Film Award)
- Filmography: I Kill Giants (2017)
- Language: Danish
- Has Subtitles: Yes
- International Sales: TrustNordisk