The Hunt

Lucas has lost his job at the closed-down school and now works at the village kindergarten. He is divorced, fighting for time with his teenage son, and well liked. Then a small girl, the daughter of his best friend, says something she half understands, and the adults finish the sentence for her. Within days the community has turned.

This is Vinterberg's most controlled film, written with Tobias Lindholm. It studies how quickly collective certainty forms around a lie, and how slowly, if ever, it dissolves. There is no mystery for the audience. We know he is innocent. The horror is in watching everyone else decide otherwise: the supermarket, the dog, the Christmas Eve service where Lucas finally looks his accuser in the eye.

Mads Mikkelsen won Best Actor at Cannes, and he plays Lucas almost entirely through restraint, a decent man holding his dignity until he can't. The final scene refuses the comfort of resolution. One of the essential Danish films of the last thirty years, and one that stays with you for days.