re:mote voices

Title: Besat
Cast: Ole Lemmeke, Kirsti Eline Torhaug, Ole Ernst, Niels Anders Thorn, Jesper Langberg
Director:Anders Rønnow-Klarlund

Besat (Possessed) is a Danish thriller, following events sparked off by the arrival of two men in Copenhagen on a flight from Rumania. One is a Rumanian man, who dies soon after arriving, apparently of a disease, which resembles Ebola. An ambitious virologist at the Copenhagen hospital wants to follow it up, too make sure there isn’t going to be an outbreak. But his superiors think he is just trying to make a name for himself, and would be happier to dismiss one unexplained death than invite the circus that would accompany a CDC investigation. Meanwhile the second man appears to be a German priest, who is fleeing Rumanian police after becoming a suspect in a fire bombing. Reports of the suspect having boarded a flight to Copenhagen prompt a young officer to persuade his superior to allow him to check out the local hotels in case they have an arsonist on their hands. From the beginning it is clear to the viewer that the two threads are connected, but it takes some time for the two men on the trail of separate events to start seeing just what the connections are. Besat is atmospheric, mainly through the visuals, a level of filtration seeming to be in place from the start, while the scenes in Bucharest (where the doctor is trying to trace the possible virus) are particularly grim – stray dogs, decrepit industrial buildings, and furious locals. The culmination is perhaps not as intense as it could have been, but it certainly builds with the revelation of a connection and the ravings of the arsonist.