Pigen Med Nålen

“The Girl with the Needle” is a film directed and co-written by Magnus von Horn that was part of the competition for the Palme d’Or at the 77th Cannes Film Festival in May 2024. It has a gorgeous black and white cinematography with gloomy fairytale-like elements carrying an incredibly dark subject matter far from fairytales and hauntedly close to reality. The filmmaker masterfully uses the genre of horror to mediate a dreadful real-life inspired story from the past and create a complex, yet universally understood web of perspectives and emotions in it. A young woman named Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), trapped in poverty and miserable social circumstances has her path crossed with a candy shop owner Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm) who offers desperate young mothers false hope and a solution with no morals. We witness the existential struggle between social classes, men and women, adults and newborns; but also find solidarity in most unusual and unholy situations. The film adapts a real-life monster Dagmar Overby sentenced to a lifetime in prison in year 1921, whose character could also be interpreted as a personification of consequence born out of social and governmental structures that lack the much-needed attention and care for the weak in society. Although the film according to script and visuals is a historical piece set in post-World War I Copenhagen, the producer Malene Blenkov mentions at the press conference following the premiere in Cannes that they intentionally made the movie to resonate with today’s reality. According to her at some point they even had the working title called “The Unwanted” referring to all the people that are being unwanted in the world and unable to cope with the life they are living. Therefore, this movie is most definitely a thought-provoking work of art!