Liberation (2024)

Written for RAF News January 2024

April 1945, the war is almost over but Nazi rule perseveres in Denmark, where over 200,000 German refugees have arrived looking for shelter. Residential colleges are instructed to house these large groups of civilians, including many children, wrongly informed that the occupying forces will provide food and medicine, they are abandoned sick and hungry.

Ryslinge Folk High School is the setting of this story, where over 500 Germans have arrived. Head of the school Jacob (Pilou Asbæk)is commanded to make room for them by the Wehrmacht, whilst the board of directors insist that he must not share any resources. This becomes extremely challenging when the elderly and very young begin to die, diphtheria spreading through the numbers, made worse by the cramped living conditions of the gymnasium where they are being housed.

Liberation is about the extreme difficulties of a place in transition, the moral complexity of trying to help those in need without jeopardising the safety of others. Jacob along with his wife Lis (Katrine Greis-Rosenthal) can not sit idly by whilst people are dying but members of the resistance, who are readying themselves to revolt, do not take kindly to sympathisers. Any help offered to these refugees is seen as aiding the German war machine.

The film is largely told from the point of view of Jacob’s boy Søren (an impressive Lasse Peter Larsen). He, like many kids his age, resents the influx of the starved and destitute now in his home. There is a particular viscousness to the children, as they turn on Søren for his father’s perceived betrayal. This retribution is an echo of the ideas playing out among the resistance. Birk (a brilliantly conflicted Morten Hee Andersen) is a student at Ryslinge, vengeful after his father is killed by Nazi’s he becomes an impassioned member of the resistance, and seeing Jacob as a traitor, will try to convince young Søren to turn against him.

Liberation is an interesting and nuanced story well told with a brooding tension, upheld by great performances.