Kira is obsessive compulsive and mania depressive. She has just spend two years at a psychiatric hospital and is now returning to her family. Her husband, Mads, loves her deeply, and goes to great lengths to prove it. But Kira has a hard time both adapting to freedom and to the overwhelming love from family and friends. The more love she feels, the more she rejects it. But Mads holds on to her, despite her disease and the problems it brings along.

Written by Mogens Rukov, who also wrote “The Celebration”, “Kira’s choice” is a stunning film, directed and acted to perfection. If differs slightly from other contemporary Danish drama, by transposing the inability to deal with sickness onto a sick person, thus reversing the motif somewhat by adding the inability to deal with love. Where people reach out, Kira reacts by rejecting. The story thereby asks the question, can one feel love if one wont accept it.

It further punctuates both the theme of inability and love, by having Kira behave in such extreme manners, that we are forced to step back, yet at the same time, the love of Mads is so strong, that we are kept on a leach and pulled back. This dynamic ability of the story is only possible by a tight direction and believable acting and “Kira’s choice” has both. Mads (Lars Mikkelsen) is constantly walking a tightrope between love and despair and Kira (Stine Stengård) ranged from frantic joy to deep doubt.

The director, Ole Christian Madsen, was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize “For its authentic depiction of a human relationship in crisis, empowered by outstanding performances.”
 

Henrik Sylow