“Vogter”, interview with director Gustav Möller

February 23, 2024

Gustav Möller, director of Vogter : “as a filmmaker I think a prison is a very strong canvas to tell a story: strong characters, clear archetypes, a lot of rules and power structures”

“Vogter”, interview with director Gustav Möller Chiara Nicoletti

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With “The Guilty“ in 2018, his debut feature, Gustav Möller had managed to create a fast-paced psychological thriller in one small place such as the Emergency East desk in a police station. At the 74th Berlinale, the danish director brings his new work, “Vogter“, all set into a prison.

“As a filmmaker I think a prison is a very strong canvas to tell a story: strong characters, clear archetypes, a lot of rules and power structures” he states. In that very claustrophobic place, Möller examines the power dynamics between Eva (Sidse Babett Knudsen), an idealistic prison officer and Mikkel (Sebastian Bull), a newly arrived inmate who seems to trigger the worse part of Eva’s personality and past.

Gustav Möller also says that in the Scandinavian legal system there’s a very interesting conflict between wanting to help people and wanting punish people. As these are two conflicting objectives, his film tries to explore how and if they can co-exist.

Plot

Eva, an idealistic prison officer, is faced with the dilemma of her life when a young man from her past gets transferred to the prison where she works. Without revealing her secret, Eva asks to be moved to the young man’s ward – the toughest and most violent in the prison. Here begins an unsettling psychological thriller, where Eva’s sense of justice puts both her morality and future at stake.

Written by: Chiara Nicoletti

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