This year marks the 17th Panorama of the European Film, the annual event hosted by Zawya art house and directed by producer and filmmaker Marianne Khoury with the help of a dedicated team of young programmers and organisers.

The programme includes more than 40 award-winning films from various prestigious world festivals like Cannes, Venice, Berlin and others being screened at Zawya, the Zamalek cinema and, less frequently, at the Arkan Mall and Point 90 cinemas, in addition to screenings in Alexandria and Minya.

This year, the Panorama of the European Film features one of the best marital dramas I have ever seen, the Norwegian film Loveable. The debut feature by filmmaker Lilja Ingolfsdottir, it also participated in El Gouna Film Festival in its official selection out of competition. It opens with a fast paced account of how Maria met her second husband, whom she seems to choose, fixing her gaze on him to attract his attention at the party where she first meets him and he doesn’t seem very attracted to her. But then their paths cross on a few more occasions till they fall deeply in love, and through this fast montage the viewer can take in their growing relationship and gain access to their intimate moments.

After this quick sequence, the drama jumps seven years ahead into the marriage of Maria (Helga Guren) and Sigmund (Oddgeir Thune), which is on the verge of falling apart. Maria is 40 and almost hysterical. She has two teenage children from her previous marriage and two younger children who still need a lot of attention, and she keeps objecting to his constant travelling for work, leaving her to take care of all four children and the housework, bitterly complaining until he takes a stand and tells her she needs to seek help for her anger.

The nuanced screenplay, also written by Ingolfsdottir, has Maria embark on a brilliant journey of self-exploration after Maria and Sigmund separate and he insists that she should leave and stay at her old apartment. Maria is still on the verge of a breakdown, and she is trying desperately to return to Sigmund and on one occasion she even humiliates herself in front of his colleagues to that end.  

The screenplay unravels the layers of human behaviour one layer at a time as it first features one of their attempts to preserve their marriage when they start marriage counselling with a therapist who is really struck by Maria’s bitter complaints and at one point it is obvious that Sigmund has already decided to leave.

He later emails Maria telling her to be prepared that he is ending the relationship. The drama features another quick sequence of edited scenes of the daily struggles between the couple, including a brilliant scene in which, while Maria is sorting the laundry, Sigmund tries to help only to meet with Maria’s disapproval.

With such a simple scene the screenplay reveals a lot about what is wrong in the relationship, and this is one of the most powerful aspects of this screenplay: it has the ability to reveal so much of the characters with so little effort through the smallest details.

Another powerful scene is when Maria visits her mother, and again with such tint details the film divulges the complexities of the characters and their relationship, showing how the visit reveals a lot to Maria herself: how much her dynamic with her mother told her about herself and how her mother resents the absence of her father who had left them long time ago. That is probably when Maria decides to deal with her issues. She visits the therapist alone and as she asks her to lie down she simply opens up, leading to a moment of revelation.

The film is an unusual account of a couple’s separation, a rather deep self-exploration of the complex character of Maria versus all too simple character of Sigmund who confesses at last that he couldn’t articulate what he wanted from the relationship, something that is obvious from the beginning when she chooses him and he goes along with it, chasing him while, leading a busy life, he remains indifferent.

Rather than giving Sigmund one of the usual reasons to leave – another woman, for example – the drama sends Maria on a long journey to rediscover herself and revise her attitude and dynamics even with her teenage daughter. And this is not to mention the brilliance of the screenplay and the captivating performance of Gurin who is on screen almost for the duration of the 101-minute film.

***

The Danish film Sons, directed by Gustav Möller, best known for his 2018 hit The Guilty, a low-budget thriller based on a phone call received by a police emergency operator and set entirely in a small room where this operator talks to a woman in distress with his headphones on. This time Möller focuses on a prison guard, Eva Hansen (Sidse Bebett Knudsen), who spends most of her time at the prison excelling at her job, attending meditation class while teaching the prisoners maths and often asking them if they have enough cigarettes. But she seems sad and angry, it is not clear why.

Eva is interested in the records of new prisoners arriving, focusing on a specific prisoner named Mikkel (Sebastian Bull), who will be admitted to the high-security block where she doesn’t work. But Eva seems to want to track him down since she requests a transfer to the high-security block.

Once there, she starts treating him with hostility, spitting in his food and holding back his cigarettes saying that no one sent him anything, even plotting to get him in trouble with the other prisoners.

The story begins to unravel slowly as we realise Eva is waging a kind of vendetta against Mikkel, on one occasion beating him with a baton until her colleague has to pull her away. He starts threatening her with pressing charges against her unless she meets his demands.

It eventually becomes clear that Eva’s son has died, and Mikkel seems to have been behind his death. This was uncovered gradually, with suspenseful skill, though no match to what Möller manages in The Guilty. And yet the film has a different kind of power.

The master scene is when Eva accompanies Mikkel on a day visit to his mother after a lot of arrangements that she had to comply with in order to avoid him pressing charges against her.

He sits at a dining table with his mother and she is invited to join them, then Mikkel is furious at his mother and starts to throw the cake in her face in the presence of Eva who cannot interfere, but on the way back she almost kills him when he tries to escape in the middle of the forest.

The cinematography adds a sense of claustrophobia with so many scenes in the small prison rooms where violence often erupts.