The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

Berlin Film Festival 2020

Hope (Håp)

Berlin Film Festival 2020: Hope (Håp) | Review
26 February 2020
Oliver Johnston
Avatar
Oliver Johnston
26 February 2020

Movie and show review

Oliver Johnston

Hope (Håp)

★★★★★

Links

Facebook

Special event

The general premise of Hope sounds undeniably bleak, and even a little familiar. On paper, the film might initially seem like a stagy, disease-of-the-week TV drama, but the narrative unfolds with a devastating fragility. It chronicles a story about mounting, though muted, despair, while all around the feeling of hope remains ubiquitous – as it must.

Andrea Bræin Hovig is Anja, returning home just before Christmas after a well-received international performance by the dance company she heads. Her peculiar bouts of ill health are swiftly identified as a massive brain tumour, thought to have metastasized from the lung cancer she successfully overcame just the Christmas before. With her condition deemed inoperable, Anja must navigate a complex emotional journey that requires her to face the elements of her life that might have been unfulfilled, just as that life is entering its endgame.

The rawness of the narrative becomes more potent due to the fact that the movie is a fictionalised version of director Maria Sødahl’s own life. Sødahl was diagnosed with terminal cancer seven years ago, and now stares her own mortality square in the face with her husband, Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland, by her side. Stellan Skarsgård plays Moland’s proxy, as Anja’s partner Tomas. This is a potentially officious casting choice, as Skarsgård and Moland are frequent collaborators, with the Swedish actor most recently appearing in Moland’s Out Stealing Horses (Ut og stjæle hester), which competed at the 69th Berlinale in 2019.   

Neither Anja nor Tomas are sanctified. They’re presented as a couple trying to prove to themselves that their relationship is as authentic and uncompromised as they thought it to be. Domesticity continues, as Hope takes viewers through certain essential emotional beats, all with quiet efficiency. Though the presupposed awareness of how such an account will unravel might make it feel like the film could just elicit a numbing indifference, Hope is a moving story of aspiration, delivered with intelligence. Bring tissues.

★★★★★

Oliver Johnston

Hope (Håp) does not have a UK release date yet.

Read more reviews from our Berlin Film Festival 2020 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the Berlin Film Festival website here.

Watch the trailer for Hope (Håp) here:

 

Related Itemsreview

More in Berlinale

A Little Love Package

★★★★★
Oliver Johnston
Read More

Sonne

★★★★★
Selina Sondermann
Read More

Gangubai Kathiawadi

★★★★★
Selina Sondermann
Read More

“I was always trying to find this equilibrium between improvising and following the script”: Carla Simón on Golden Bear-winning Alcarràs

Sarah Bradbury
Read More

A E I O U – A Quick Alphabet of Love: An interview with Nicolette Krebitz

Selina Sondermann
Read More

Berlinale 2022: Awards predictions and highlights from the festival

Selina Sondermann
Read More

Concerned Citizen

★★★★★
Oliver Johnston
Read More

So-seol-ga-ui yeong-hwa (The Novelist’s Film)

★★★★★
Selina Sondermann
Read More

Rimini: An interview with director Ulrich Seidl

Selina Sondermann
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Movie and show review

Oliver Johnston

Hope (Håp)

★★★★★

Links

Facebook

Special event

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • Albert Adrià reopens Enigma on 7 June as a “fun-dining” restaurant and cocktail bar
    Food & Drinks
  • The Road Dance
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Paolo Nutini at the 100 Club
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Crimes of the Future: Three new clips from David Cronenberg’s dystopian body horror film
    Cannes
  • The Innocents
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Marcel!
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • More than Ever (Plus que Jamais)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Plan 75
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Enys Men
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • The Stranger
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • More than Ever (Plus que Jamais)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Plan 75
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
  • Dirty Dancing the Movie in concert at Apollo Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Feminine Power: The Divine to the Demonic at the British Museum
    ★★★★★
    Art
  • Eo (Hi-Han)
    ★★★★★
    Cannes
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

Berlin Film Festival 2020: Kill It and Leave This Town (Zabij to i wyjedz z tego miasta) | Review
Berlin Film Festival 2020: Eeb Allay Ooo! | Review