“Fast-paced and highly polished” (Variety) — on December 8, see the fourth film in the gripping Department Q Danish crime series, The Purity of Vengeance (dir. Christoffer Boe; Denmark, 2018) in New Nordic Cinema at Scandinavia House!

Based on Jussi Adler-Olsen’s international bestsellers, the riveting Department Q series follows maverick detective Carl Mørck (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) who, with his partner Assad (Fares Fares) and secretary Rose (Johanne Louise Schmidt), digs into shocking unsolved mysteries in cold cases. The Purity of Vengeance begins with a terrifying discovery made by construction workers in an old Copenhagen apartment: three mummified corpses sitting around a dinner table, with one open seat, behind a fake wall. When Detective Mørck and Assad search for the apartment’s owner, they discover clues leading back to an infamous women’s institution on Sprogø, where neglect and medicinal experiments of forced sterilization were inflicted upon the so-called immoral girls placed there. Though the horrors on Sprogø are believed to be a finished chapter in Danish history, others say that the experiments continue at the facility — leading Carl and Assad on a race with time to prevent more murders and assaults.

Film screenings will take place as a 3 PM matinee and 7 PM evening showing. Tickets to this event must be purchased in advance online at the link above; film screenings will take place in Victor Borge Hall. All attendees are required to present proof of vaccination upon arrival in compliance with New York State government; read more here. Attendees are required to follow all Scandinavia House safety protocols, including wearing masks during the program and observing social distancing rules in signage. Please read our full safety protocols here.

About the Director

Christoffer Boe (b. July 5 1974) graduated in direction from the National Film School of Denmark in 2001. His first feature film, Reconstruction (2003), won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Festival 2003. He has also directed the feature films Allegro (2005), Offscreen (2006), Everything Will Be Fine (2010), Beast (2011) and the biopic‘Sex, Drugs and Taxation (2013). Boe helmed the fourth film in Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q-series, The Purity of Vengeance (2018).

He wrote, with Simon Pasternak and based on an idea by Boe, the TV crime series Warrior (2018) and directed all six episodes. In 2017, Boe directed The Journey, a film made for a cinematic exhibition at the Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus.