The multifaceted Viggo Mortensen not only stars in The Dead Don’t Hurt (2023) but also directed the film, wrote the screenplay, and composed the soundtrack.
Three years after making his directorial debut with the impressive drama Falling, the multi-talented Viggo Mortensen is back in the director’s chair with this understated period romance set in the American West. In his latest film, he plays the Danish immigrant Holger, a sheriff in a dusty Nevada town in the mid-19th century. Mortensen’s focused and subdued direction is a well-crafted homage to classic Westerns, updated with the confidence of an auteur to include a female protagonist at the center of the action – the independent free-thinker Vivienne (Vicky Krieps), who finds in Holger both a partner and a kindred spirit striving to live a dignified life in a world of violent primitives.
