The Guilty

Gustav Möller’s first feature grew from a YouTube recording of a kidnapped woman talking to an emergency dispatcher; struck by how much sound alone could build, he said he felt he had seen the woman and the car. The podcast Serial, redrawing the listener’s picture each episode, fed in too. Möller and co-writer Emil Nygaard Albertsen researched Danish dispatch centres, liking that the real room looked like an ordinary office; the design stayed deliberately drab. The budget stayed at 500,000 euros. With cinematographer Jasper Spanning he split the script into 8 segments, changing lenses and approach for each; on screen they ran between 5 and 35 minutes. The shoot used 3 cameras and took 13 days, sound editing a further 8 weeks. Sundance 2018 gave it the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award. Denmark entered it for the Academy Awards, where it made the December shortlist but no nomination. At the 36th Robert Awards it took 7 prizes, more than any other film that year, among them Best Danish Film, Best Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Sound Design. A good fit if you want information arriving by ear, the picture assembled in your head. Not for anyone waiting for action in the frame; the tension is largely carried by the phone calls.