Hope

Maria Sødahl's 2019 Norwegian film begins just before the Christmas holiday. A couple who have been together twenty years and drifted apart are hit by a severe diagnosis. The days that follow are built on medical decisions and on old accounts inside the family: what to tell the children, who carries what, when the conversations postponed for years finally happen. The film does not use illness as dramatic material; hospital bureaucracy, waiting for appointments and the difficulty of communicating with doctors are shown with almost documentary attention. Sødahl wrote the script out of her own experience of illness. Andrea Bræin Hovig and Stellan Skarsgård together carry both the wear on the relationship and what is left of it. Who it's for: viewers who like calm, realistic Scandinavian family drama. Who it's not for: anyone who would rather not approach a story built on serious illness and the possibility of death.