Sorrow and Joy

Johannes, a filmmaker, and his wife Signe, a schoolteacher, go through the worst thing a person can imagine. The film comes out of Nils Malmros's own life. In February 1984, at their house outside Aarhus, his wife, in a postnatal psychosis, killed their nine month old daughter while he was giving a lecture in another part of the country. The court sent her into psychiatric care. Talking about it, Malmros said that a person in a psychotic state cannot be guilty. Rather than showing the event, the film stays with what came before and after, and with how two people chose to remain together. It was submitted as Denmark's Oscar entry.