Dark Horse

Colour, 35 mm
Denmark, 2005, 106 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

Young Daniel is the right kind of outsider. Officially, he doesn?t make any money, and he doesn’t pay his fines or debts. He even buys petrol for his old Fiat 600 in half-litres. But he’s basically contented. He is occasionally commissioned to do some graffiti for one of his besotted mates who needs him to spray his girlfriend’s name somewhere, and this suffices for his livelihood. That is, until he and another weird friend, known as the Old Man, meet a female rebel called Franc, a shop assistant in a bakery. Things change and they start having unexpected money problems. The fates of these youngsters are linked up with the parallel tale of a well-situated but extremely bored judge. Icelandic director Dagur Kári made a name for himself with his debut Nói the Albino, whose protagonist was an adolescent and "somewhat untypical" young man. The village setting on the shores of the Icelandic fjord is replaced in Kári’s new film by the Danish capital. But the new story has a far less dramatic curve. The narration unfolds in a slow tempo and on a fairly unstable plane, rendered all the more unusual through the use of black-and-white film.

About the director

Dagur Kári (born Dagur Kári Pétersson, 1973, Paris) grew up in Iceland, but in 1999 studied at the Danish National Film School in Copenhagen, where he attracted attention with his films The Violin Maker (1997) and Old Spice (1999). His short graduate feature film Lost Weekend won a number of prizes. He contributed to the collection of film stories Dramarama (Villiljós, 2001) and gave his solo debut with the psychological film about a fumbling 17-year-old boy Nói the Albino (Nói Albinói), also awarded at IFFs in Rotterdam, Angers and Rouen, and screened at the KV IFF in 2003. The gloomy comedy Dark Horse (Voksne mennesker, 2005), screened in the section Un certain regard at the Cannes IFF, again follows the lives of non-conformist young people. Kári’s band Slowblow, apart from appearing in concert, also feature on the soundtracks of his films.