The Here After

John comes out of prison and returns to his father's farm. The town is small and everyone knows what he did. He has to go back to school, where nobody speaks to him. His father asks nothing and tries to behave normally. The town does not accept it: he is refused service in the shop, the car is written on, threats arrive. John says nothing. Magnus von Horn writes and directs in his first film. Ulrik Munther plays John. The film's choice is not to show the crime. What happened is withheld for a long time, and the narrative is interested not in the act but in what follows; whether atonement is possible is left open. It puts nobody in the right. The town's anger is comprehensible, so is the father's silence, and so is John's position; the film does not choose between them. The visual language is fixed and distant. The camera does not move, the scenes are held long, and there is almost no music. Von Horn is Swedish and made the film after training at the Łódź film school in Poland; it is a Swedish and Polish co-production. Ulrik Munther was known in Sweden as a pop singer and this is his first acting work. It screened in Directors' Fortnight at the 2015 Cannes film festival. Who it is for: viewers who like severe Scandinavian drama and stories set after a crime. Who it is not for: the pace is very slow, the characters are closed, and the ending offers no resolution.