Redoubt (in-person & online)

Denis Lavant, Agnieszka Podsiadlik, Livia Millhagen, Aron Skoog

A grizzled Denis Lavant (Holy Motors, Beau Travail, The Lovers on the Bridge) gives an intensely physical performance in this tender allegory of survival from filmmaker, photographer and video artist John Skoog (Ridge). Based on real events, it’s set at the height of the Cold War and lightly punctuated with quotes from If War Comes – a civil defence guidance issued to Swedish households by the government during the era, when fear of nuclear war with nearby Soviet Russia was a daily concern.

In a small Swedish village, eccentric farm worker Karl-Göran Persson (Lavant) begins fortifying his modest home into a collective haven from nuclear armageddon. Compulsively gathering scrap metal, he casts it into the walls of his home. He envisions a fortress that will protect him and his neighbours; but his efforts bewilder everyone around him except the local children.

Shot in soft black and white by Ita Zbroniec-Zajt and full of extraordinary visual tableaux, Redoubt is a richly symbolic portrait of obsession, isolation and fear amid the undulations of rural daily life.