Holiday

A lavish trip to the Turkish Riviera goes horribly awry in this disturbing tale of power, exploitation and complicity from the writer of Border.

Sascha (the fascinatingly elusive Victoria Carmen Sonne) is the trophy girlfriend of Danish gangster Michael. Whisked away on a luxury villa vacation, along with Michael’s uncivilised criminal family, Sascha shops, barbeques, drinks and parties to her heart’s content. But beneath the fragile veneer of joyful excess, the threat of danger looms. And when Sascha unwisely indulges in some harmless flirtation with a Dutch traveller, Michael steps in to exert his authority.

Punctuated by scenes of extreme violence, Isabella Eklöf’s arresting debut is not an easy watch, but nor is it an unthinking provocation. Instead, Eklöf has crafted a complex and often uncomfortably ambiguous portrait of male abuse and domination, shot with a chilly formalism at jarring odds with the sun-drenched vistas of her luscious Mediterranean locales.