Another Round

Thomas Vinterberg's Another Round (Druk) won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film in 2021 and the BAFTA in the same category, becoming the most internationally celebrated Danish film since The Hunt. Vinterberg dedicated the Oscar to his daughter Ida, who was killed in a car accident four days into the production; he had originally written the film with her in mind for a supporting role. Mads Mikkelsen, the lead, has called it the most personally exposed work of his career.

Four middle-aged high-school teachers in suburban Copenhagen (Martin (Mikkelsen), Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), Peter (Lars Ranthe), and Nikolaj (Magnus Millang)) undertake a private experiment based on the Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud's theory that humans are born with a blood-alcohol deficit and function better at a steady 0.05 percent. They begin maintaining that level discreetly during the school day. The early results are vivifying; the eventual escalation is catastrophic.

The film's structural masterstroke is to refuse to moralise the experiment, allowing each of the four men's trajectories to develop on its own terms while Sturla Brandth Grøvlen's restless handheld camera tracks the gradual recalibration of routine. Scarlet Pleasure's What a Life, written for the soundtrack, became a chart hit across Scandinavia after release. Beyond the Oscar and BAFTA, the film swept the European Film Awards (Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor) and earned Vinterberg a personal Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards, rare recognition for a non-English-language director.