Violent

Violent is a Canada-Norway coproduction and is the debut feature from writer-director Andrew Huculiak, drummer for the Vancouver-based band We Are the City. The film was originally conceived to be a companion piece for the release of the album of the same name, but it grew into its own stand-alone project. Suspense is sustained in an abstract way: musical motifs from their songs, pinpoints of light, atmospheric electro-magnetics and a repeated, wave-like mantra. The story takes us to Bergen, Norway, and the protagonist is young Dagny (the incandescent Dagny Backer Johnsen), whose reminiscences of the five people who loved her most rise to the surface at the same time as she experiences a resonant epiphany.