06/01/2025 - The Danish director tells us more about his story of two siblings and what piqued his interest in exploring the kind of religious community it’s set in

(© Pelle Gudmundsen Holmgreen)

Danish director Jeppe Rønde presents his new drama Acts of Love [+see also:
film review
interview: Jeppe Rønde
film profile] in the Harbour section of this year's International Film Festival Rotterdam. It sees him return to the festival after ten years, as he was invited along to the Dutch gathering with his first feature, Bridgend [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], in 2015. We talked to him about this new story of two siblings and his personal connection to it.

Cineuropa: What fascinates you about this kind of community that your story is set in?
Jeppe Rønde: This kind of religious collective exists in the far west of Denmark, towards the sea. My family comes from that area, only a few kilometres away from the actual place where we shot; my grandmother had her dental practice there. It felt like a homecoming – the people there are strictly religious, albeit without forming a free church specifically, like the one we have portrayed. But my interest in religion and faith has been there since my childhood.

The dominant topics of the film are parenting and motherhood. What drew you to these subjects?
It comes from a strong inner need to share the feelings of shame that I've carried around since childhood. The film is built on real memories, meaning it’s based on a feeling that I remember. It's a memory of being lost – with no boundaries – within the realm of parents who should have acted differently. The siblings in the film come from an upbringing with very few boundaries. They had to navigate their way through their childhood, going against the adults, and as such, they became a two-person army in order to safeguard each other. That drew me to my own feeling of shame. I know from the former films I have made that if you tell your story as part of a bigger collective, you can somehow breathe more easily. It can also be liberating for others, too, because most of us have things we are dealing with. I think it's important to discuss guilt and shame, and I am sure that it will alleviate mine as much as the feelings of the viewer.

The community thinks its biggest achievement is that the members don't have any boundaries. Then Hannah and Jakob come along and mess everything up. Was it difficult for you to find an ending to this story or to avoid picking a side?
It is up to the viewer to decide which side he or she wants to pick. I didn't want to be didactic, and I never asked myself that question. I followed a more intuitive way of exploring the story. I tried to navigate the story by heading in a certain direction, but I also let it drive me intuitively. Any film has to have its own inner life that guides you.

You show a particular method of therapy in the film, a “mirroring procedure”. How did you develop it?
The inspiration came from my own therapy that I have been undergoing for many years. I have tried many different forms, and among them are the so-called “mirrorings”, which are based on German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger's therapeutic concept of “family constellations”. That means a kind of reenactment of the past. This way, different people can step into your family – I could play your late grandma, even though I’m not the same age or gender, for example. There’s something that happens in that room because it's not about finding the exact memory, but rather about finding the feeling that emerges. The “mirrorings”, with their concept of reenactment, are quite close to cinema. And what I liked about this method is that it needs a collective. The group can embrace anyone coming from anywhere and alleviate the feeling of shame from the individual by bringing it upon the collective.

Why was it important for you to bring in the relationship between Greenland and Denmark?
This film is about boundaries and overstepping them – they obviously exist in a very intimate space between the siblings, the protagonists of the story. But also, I wanted to show that they exist at every level of society. The context of a religious community could be one example; another one is shown by the relationship between Greenland and Denmark, the latter having been the coloniser of the former. So, I wanted to show this sense of guilt and shame that’s connected to doing this as a society.

What was your aim when it came to the cultural elements that you used from Greenland?
I have travelled extensively in Greenland, and I have filmed documentaries there. I didn’t know the element of the myth we used within the film, but it's quite famous in Greenlandic culture. I learned about it during the casting from one of the Greenlandic actresses.