- Denmark
THE ART OF CRYING
Synopsis
In rural Denmark, in the early 1970s. Eleven-year-old Allan idolises his father Henry, the village milkman. He considers it entirely normal to stay awake at night to keep his father company through his crying fits and threats of suicide. What else the father does to the family, Allan does not understand – and he does everything he can to hold together a family that has long since fallen apart. Peter Schønau Fog’s “The Art of Crying” (Denmark 2006, original title “Kunsten at græde i kor”) tells, from the child’s point of view, of abuse within a family and of a father who rules over his relatives through tears.
Fog combines tragedy, the portrait of a village community and black comedy into a tragicomedy whose lightness makes the horror all the more apparent. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2006, with a Danish theatrical release in April 2007. “The Art of Crying” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2008.
Festival
Shown at the 2008 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.
