Birthday Girl

Acclaimed actress Trine Dyrholm takes the lead role in director Michael Noer’s gripping drama as brash, extroverted Nanna, a single mother who invites her daughter Cille (Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl) to join her on a luxury cruise to celebrate the girl’s eighteenth birthday. For Nanna, this is an opportunity to bond with quiet, reserved Cille, so much her opposite. After encouraging the younger woman to drink to excess, Cille is found the next morning asleep on deck, her underwear beside her, and with no memory of the night’s events. Believing her daughter to have been sexually assaulted, Nanna fights the complacency of the crew, who are more concerned with bad PR than the crime itself, to find the perpetrator, often making a bad situation worse. Dyrholm creates a complex and frequently unlikeable character trying to protect her child, sometimes for dubious reasons.