As Tallinn Black Nights kicks off from 13 November, the festival will feature the world premiere of Jonas Kærup Hjort’s darkly humorous drama ‘The Penultimate’. The film is selected for the First Feature Competition.
The festival line-up also includes the international premiere of Henrik Ruben Genz’s 'Erna at War' in the main competition as well as the Baltic premiere of Anders Ølholm and Frederik Louis Hviid's action drama 'Shorta' in the Midnight Shivers programme showing the best of genre films.
"Driven by strong-handed vision"
“A truly remarkable piece for those who are not afraid of grotesquely pitch-black absurd humour," writes the festival to describe the young talent's drama, adding:
"The film offers us an impressive example of an author who has fully evolved by the time of his debut film and whose work is driven by strong-handed vision and style."
‘The Penultimate’ is a Kafkaesque tale of an insignificant clerk who arrives at a remote building to read the resident’s water meters. Before he knows it, he is trapped in an endless maze of obstacles. In the attempt to escape from the building, his perception of reality, his rationality, and the remains of his human existence are turned upside down.
Jonas Kærup Hjort graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 2017. He has received several nominations at international short film festivals and three awards at the Danish Ekko Shortlist Awards in 2018 for his graduation film ‘In a Month’.
‘The Penultimate’ is produced by Rikke Tambo Andersen for Tambo Film with support from the Danish Film Institute's talent programme New Danish Screen and the West Danish Film Fund.
A broad Danish release is set for 2021, but the film can already be experienced locally as part of this year’s Copenhagen-based CPH PIX festival in December.
