The Giant

Rikard is thirty, autistic, and his face is severely deformed. He lives in a home for disabled people. He was separated from his mother at three and that separation is still inside him. All he wants is to see her. He also loves playing pétanque, and he believes that if he enters a tournament his mother will come and watch him. He starts training for it. Johannes Nyholm's film is built on two layers: on one side the reality of the home and the tournament, on the other the inside of Rikard's head. There he is a giant fifty metres tall, walking above the landscape. The crossings between the two worlds are not explained; they simply happen. The film makes Rikard neither pitiable nor inspiring; instead it takes the game seriously, because pétanque is what is serious to him. Eighty-six minutes.