“One of Denmark’s most exciting young directors and screenwriters (he co-wrote Susanne Bier’s Brothers), Anders Thomas Jensen demonstrated his talent for wicked comedy with [2003’s] The Green Butchers ... His penchant for subversion and outrage is even more evident in Adam’s Apples, a decidedly twisted parody of spiritual redemption melodramas. Ivan (Mads Mikkelsen)
is an insanely optimistic preacher who takes in convicts to help around the remote, rural church he ministers to ... His newest ‘helper’ is Adam (Ulrich Thomsen from Brothers), a vicious neo-Nazi biding his time before he can return to hellraising. Asked to set a goal for his stay, Adam sarcastically answers that he’d like to bake a pie. Ivan cheerfully takes that statement at face value and puts him in charge of the parish’s pride and joy: the only apple tree in the vicinity ... Visually stunning in a manner that evokes the work of Bergman, Dreyer and Tarkovsky, Adam’s Apples is the kind of film that makes you squirm, laugh and gasp simultaneously” (Toronto I.F.F.). The movie was Denmark’s official Foreign-Language Film Oscar submission last year. “Hugely entertaining ... It’s as opulent as a collaboration between Ingmar Bergman and Ridley Scott” (Ken Eisner, Georgia Straight). Colour, 35mm, in Danish with English subtitles. 94 mins.

Prominent Estonian actor Jan Uuspõld plays a parody version of himself in the unruly 186 Kilometres, a black comedy that traverses Sacha Baron Cohen territory and was a major home-grown hit in Estonia. The title refers to the distance between the Estonian capital of Tallinn and the town of Tartu, to which our down-on-his-luck, hard-living hero, homeless and penniless, must hitchhike in pursuit of a much-needed acting job. He has a series of bizarre encounters — and endures a variety of torments from his fellow Estonians — along the way. Among those he meets are several real-life local celebrities and politicians, including the Estonian president Toomas Henrik Ilves. The road-movie mix of reality and gonzo fiction does have similarities to Borat; in fact, co-directors Andres Maimik, a documentarian, and Rain Tolk, an actor, are known as the creators of popular Borat-like “reality” show on Estonian TV. Tolk describes
their debut feature as “a classical road-trip as well as a deeper, universal fi lm about someone’s problems with alcohol, gambling, lying, and about how a person can turn into a media image instead of being a human being.” Colour, 35mm, in Estonian with English subtitles. 106 mins.