Eat, Die, Sleep (Äta sova dö") 2012
Director Gabriela Pichler departs from a freely cinematic style under the framing of steady shots as a way to embrace the poetics of the story of Rasa (Nermina Lukac), a Serbian-origin girl who lives with his father and have worked for a long time at a vegetable factory in rural Sweden who will eventually lost her job due to hard economic times. Then the film is transformed into a coming of age lesson as well a critical yet cynical lecture of Swedish employment system while at the same time addresses immigration issues. The film also achieves deeper levels of character performance thanks to its cinema verité approach and to a charismatic driven atmosphere.
This film follow the story of Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen), a kindergarten teacher who is wrongly accused of abusing a student girl and then the entire community turns its back on him. It is also a great opportunity to admire Thomas Vinterberg´s cinematic style detached from its Dogma years. Along with screenwriter Tobias Lindholm, Vinterberg embraces a compelling story that increases its narrative pace as its strongly defined characters fight each other to face a truth that only the public knows. In that regard, at times it echoes the narrative tension of The Doubt (2005), but triggering a great deal of universal values. This powerful and visually subtle movie is the Nordic representative at 2014 ceremony.