Acts of Love (Kærlighedens gerninger, Jesper Rønde, Denmark)

But Hanna’s life in the community is turned upside down when her younger brother, Jakob, unexpectedly shows up, and repressed memories from childhood come flooding back.

Will her brother prevent Hanna from achieving her dream of becoming a mother? And can the members of the community live up to their own rules and faith when confronted with the question: Who controls love?

The title of the Danish film is the same as Søren Kierkegaard used in 1847 when writing about neighborly love.

Under the international title “Acts of Love”, the film by Danish director Jesper Rønde (b. 1973) premiered in Rotterdam. The director, who previously made documentaries such as “Jerusalem, min elskede” (2003), about losing faith in a city with three religions, and “The Swenkas” (2004), about men in Johannesburg, South Africa, made his first feature film “Bridgend” (2015) in Wales, where 79 people, mostly teenagers, took their own lives between 2007 and 2012.

The new film, “Kærlighedens gerninger”, is based on experiences of the director’s sister.

Danish priest and critic Kristian Ditlev Jensen writes in a five-star review in Ekko: “Jeppe Rønde has made one of the year’s most provocative, thought-provoking, and moving films.”

Ditlev, who also hosts the radio show Ditlev & Demonerne, says about the next episode, where Jesper Rønde is a guest talking about the film: “The story in our next episode is deeply personal – and very intense. So intense that, for example, today’s main character has been given five rules that must be followed when discussing the film to avoid legal action – by his own family.”

English critic Chris Jones, reporting from the Rotterdam Film Festival where the film premiered in January this year, writes: “One of the film’s most striking themes is shame, presented as a personal burden and a societal construct. Director Jeppe Rønde uses his experiences and Denmark’s colonial history to connect individual guilt to broader cultural narratives. These elements elevate the film from a character-driven drama to a meditation on the collective weight of the past.”

Critic Adham Yousef writes in The Film Verdict that Rønde examines the individual versus religious communal culture: “At its core, Rønde’s film gently explores belief and how it can reshape one’s personal identity. Hanna, who was once an outsider, is now immersed in an institutionalized system where faith, love, and trauma recovery are intertwined. The development of Hanna’s character suggests that belief is not just about religion but satisfying one’s need for connection and meaning. This need is fulfilled by the commune’s rituals, which can be either a source of comfort or a tool of control, encouraging the audience to draw their own conclusions about the nature of belief and manipulation. By placing Hanna in this closed world, Rønde challenges and converses with viewers to ask whether this radical transformation is a personal choice or the result of indoctrination.”