Aksel is ten years old. He lives with his mother and elder sister on a housing estate in the suburbs. There's a week's holiday from school coming up and Aksel reluctantly must spend the day time at his local after-school club. A stray dog and a song contest organized by the club are the start of a friendship between Aksel and two girls, Annika and Fatima. But things go wrong and Fatima is grounded, leaving Aksel to take matters into his own hands in order to rescue the song contest, the dog, and the school holidays.
Direction
Bovin trusts kids to be messy, unheroic, real.
Acting
The trio's chemistry feels stolen, not performed.
Writing
Dialogue so natural you'll swear you lived this.
Director
Pia Bovin
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Bovin shot in actual Sønderborg suburbs with local kids; the housing estate's brutalist architecture becomes a character.
Rare 2002 Danish film centering a Muslim girl without making her 'the issue'—Fatima's grounding reads differently post-2015.
DK
