Directed by: Gustav Möller
Screenplay by: Gustav Möller & Emil Nygaard Albertsen
Produced by: Lina Flint
Starring: Jakob Cedergren, Johan Olsen, Jessica Dinnage, Omar Shargawi, Jacob Hauberg Lohmann, Katinka Evers-Jahnsen.
2018 Sundance Film Festival
WINNER: World Cinema Dramatic – Audience Award
Opening on a blank screen, the phone rings.
Asgar (Jakob Cedergren) answers, ‘Emergency Services.’
Set entirely in the room housing the work spaces for those answering and directing the urgent calls incoming, the film focuses on the mysterious Asgar as he shows the classic signs of burn-out: a short temper, the wringing of hands as he attempts to help yet another drunk and abusive caller.
When he receives the call from Iben (Jessica Dinnage) he soon realises she’s been kidnaped, as she pretends to be calling her young daughter while Asgar attempts to find out where she is to send help.
The jaded Asgar comes to life as the tension rises – he makes a promise to Iben’s daughter he’ll get her mother home, even if he has to go off-book to help her.
But there’s something not right with Asgar.
He says he’s a protector, ‘We protect people who need help.’
He’s also a mystery.
The Guilty is a tense psychological thriller as we’re taken down a dark road of murder, fear and the frustration of being on the end of the phone trying to get to the person on the other side.
Director Gustav Möller states, ‘I believe that the strongest images in film, the ones that stay with you the longest; they are the ones, you don’t see.’
Möller has used this concept to build the suspense and mystery as Asgar tries to piece together the crime unfolding on the other end of the line.
We don’t see the crime; what we see is the warning of a red light switching on when the call is taken; the staring into space as aspirin dissolves into bubbles; the ringing of hands as they shake.
The silence is broken by the phone ringing, the soundtrack of the film, as the mystery of the caller and Asgar are revealed like, ‘A big blue silence.’
This is a gripping film that’s more a character-driven story who’s mystery is revealed in the suspense of solving a crime we can’t see. What we hear is the fear in a voice, a knocking on a door, the traffic in the background and the sound of tyres on a road taking the unwilling somewhere Asgar needs to find out if he’s going to save the person on the other side of the call.
