European Films

In the Danish family film Drømmen, a young country boy called Frits (Janus Dissing Rathke) is so inspired by the ideas of the recently assassinated Martin Luther King that he decides to change his name to Martin. He will need King’s ideas for his own personal crusade against Mr Lundum-Svenson (Bent Mejding, from Brødre/Brothers), the tyrannical headmaster of the school who physically abuses the pupils including Frits – who one day has to be taken to a doctor to have the upper and lower parts of his ear stitched to his head again after a run-in with the nasty headmaster.

The only adults who seem to be on Frits's side are the irreverent music teacher Mr "Call me Freddie" Svale (Anders W. Berthelsen, Kongekabale / King's Game) and his parents, who are outraged by the maltreatment of their son but also extremely cautious because Frits’s mother (Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis, Idioterne / The Idiots) works as a nurse at the same school and his father (Jens Jørn Spottag, also from Kongekabale) has spent some time at a psychiatric institution just before the incident. If they want to win the case against Lundum-Svenson, they will have to have to give everything it takes and the inspirational example of Martin Luther King will help them along the way.

Director and co-writer Niels Arden Oplev – who used facts from his own youth as a basis for the story – crafts a high quality family film that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. Drømmen can be firmly placed in the European tradition of stories about and with children that do not shy away from the darker sides of the childhood experience – including such recent cinematic examples as Io non ho paura (I’m not scared , with which it shares its summer in the country setting) and Les choristes or The Chorus, which has a similar nasty headmaster storyline. Drømmen is certainly not unique, but with its strong acting (including an exceptional turn from Janus Dissing Rathke who plays Frits), fresh camera-work and great sense of humour, Oplev’s film is certainly a welcome addition to the canon.