Outside Love

Down-on-his-luck single parent Shmuli (David Dencik) dreams of escaping his dour Copenhagen neighbourhood and dead-end job as a security guard at the local Jewish school. Scraping together enough money to leave Denmark for a new life in New York with his young son and fresh-out-of jail buddy (Danish cinema stalwart Nicolas Bro), Shmuli persuades Amina (Louise Hart), a Pakistani Muslim, to give him some work in her grocery store. With a fragile trust established, romance blossoms, but the path of true love never did run smooth and the pair face prejudice from both Muslim and Jewish quarters.

Muted colours and hand-held camerawork evoke the Dogme style often associated with Scandinavian cinema, but Outside Love is unusual in confronting a less familiar, less affluent side of modern Denmark, where tensions between minority and immigrant communities are rarely reflected on screen. Nominated for several awards on home
turf, this welcome Nordic addition to the festival underscores its gritty realism with an encouraging sense of hope. SM

The Jewish Experience Award, Jerusalem Film Festival 2008