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BORDER

Ali Abbasi | Denmark, Sweden | Swedish | 2018 | 108 MIN

An unusual looking border customs agent with a sense of smell so powerful it can identify criminals meets a suspicious stranger who shares her abilities in this utterly unique mystery.

With an oddly-formed snout, a mass of disheveled hair, and fierce overbite and brow, Tina looks like no one else on Earth. Although an esteemed customs agent at a rural Danish airport where she uses her extraordinary sense of smell to catch smugglers with eerie precision, her own lived experience is not unlike those trying to cross the border: feeling misunderstood and treated as an other. Outside of her job, she leads a solitary and mundane existence with a moocher of a boyfriend. But, when her keen nose plunges her into a crime-ring investigation, she comes across the mysterious Vore, who resembles her own peculiar physical appearance. Where Tina is civilized, the feral Vore is prone to eating maggots, spitting crude words, and even more alarming, seems to know secrets about her. For the first time in her life, she can’t get a read, or scent, on this man and their strange attraction leads her to life-altering revelations that lead her to a terrible choice she must make. Based on a short story by the writer of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, filmmaker Ali Abbasi’s bold and visceral film won the grand jury prize in the Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. Abbasi’s ferocious vision cuts through the traditional mystery story, blending genres and folklore with flawless abandon and confident rigor, crafting a remarkably audacious and allegorical fairy tale in a class all its own.

CAST: Eva Melander, Eero Milonoff

 


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