{"id":676035,"date":"2026-07-06T03:28:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T03:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/676035\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T03:28:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T03:28:16","slug":"trine-dyrholm-stars-in-mads-mengels-drama-the-guest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/676035\/","title":{"rendered":"Trine Dyrholm Stars in Mads Mengel’s Drama ‘The Guest’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDon\u2019t be fooled by that angelic smile. Trine Dyrholm<\/a> is ready to wreak havoc in \u201cThe Guest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Mads Mengel\u2019s drama \u2013 premiering at Karlovy Vary Film Festival<\/a> \u2013 new father Karl (Simon Bennebjerg) is preparing for his child\u2019s christening. Everything goes according to plan \u2013 until Karl finds out his mother, Vibeke (Dyrholm), will be attending as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSold by LevelK<\/a>, it\u2019s produced by Monolit Film.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen she arrives, you wonder: \u2018Why didn\u2019t he invite her?!\u2019 She\u2019s good company and doesn\u2019t give a fuck about what other people think,\u201d Trine Dyrholm tells\u00a0Variety.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut there\u2019s more to Vibeke, who\u2019s been suffering from mental health issues, and her children are bracing themselves for the worst.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSarah Kane\u2019s play \u20184.48 Psychosis\u2019 has followed me throughout my career: I did it when I was 30 and 40. At that time, I did a lot of research into mental illness,\u201d says Dyrholm. Now, she wanted to focus on Vibeke\u2019s longing instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe has all these challenges too, but you also understand she really wants to be at this party. She wants to be close to her son and her grandchild.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMengel wanted Vibeke to \u201cresist easy categorization.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPeople don\u2019t usually arrive wearing a sign that tells us whether they deserve our trust. They can be warm, charming, polite \u2013 even loving \u2013 and still have a complicated past or have caused deep hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe notes: \u201cThe audience is constantly negotiating their feelings towards her, just as Karl is. I wanted viewers to question not only who Vibeke is, but also how quickly we judge other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Guest\u201d is \u201cprobably the most personal thing\u201d he\u2019s done so far, \u201cbut it\u2019s not autobiographical.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat fascinated me wasn\u2019t telling my own story, but exploring something many people can recognize: how our understanding of our parents changes as we grow older, especially when we start our own families. I was interested in that moment when certainty begins to crack. When the people we\u2019ve spent years judging slowly become more complicated and human.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe grew up watching Dyrholm, known for Oscar-winning \u201cIn a Better World\u201d \u2013 recently, she led \u201cThe Girl with the Needle\u201d<\/a> and \u201cBirthday Girl\u201d <\/a>\u2013 and \u201ccouldn\u2019t have asked for a more generous collaborator\u201d as a debuting director.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo me, she\u2019s simply one of Denmark\u2019s greatest actors, and her range feels almost limitless. What makes her so extraordinary isn\u2019t just her technical skill. It\u2019s her deep understanding of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe\u2019s also \u201cremarkably unafraid.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEven after such an accomplished career, she still approaches every role with genuine curiosity. She\u2019s interested in exploring, taking risks and discovering something new about a character \u2013 and perhaps about people in general. That was exactly what Vibeke required.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDyrholm notes: \u201cKarl has now chosen this new family, and Vibeke goes: \u2018This is not you.\u2019 In a way, she\u2019s right. This film is called \u2018The Guest\u2019 and you could argue that Karl is also a guest in his own life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor these two, everything used to be about their mum. His sister [played by Josephine Park] can\u2019t be present in her own life because she needs to take care of her. Vibeke is a symbol of this family and of love and sorrow. She\u2019s a symbol of all the struggles you have to overcome to be free.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDyrholm was very moved by the finished film.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think it succeeds in making it universal, and showing how we struggle in trying to love each other and cope with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m very lucky to still have my mom, but we\u2019ve always had conflicts. That\u2019s just how it is with moms. That\u2019s why I told my son: \u2018I\u2019ll pay for your shrink now, because I\u2019m sure there will be some issues\u2019,\u201d she laughs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cVibeke was all alone with these kids. She had them when she was very young, and it\u2019s been a tough life. She\u2019s done what she could. We try to get away from our legacy, but the older we get, the more we embrace it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA lot happens over these few days. But there\u2019s still a lot to be done to mend this family, says Mengel.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t believe that the deepest emotional wounds can be neatly resolved over the course of a weekend. That would have felt dishonest to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat interested me was something smaller, but perhaps more meaningful: the possibility that people can take a single step towards each other. Life rarely gives us perfect endings, but it does occasionally give us the chance to begin again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t be fooled by that angelic smile. Trine Dyrholm is ready to wreak havoc in \u201cThe Guest.\u201d In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,225473,225936,2839,225937,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-676035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-karlovy-vary-film-festival","tag-levelk","tag-movies","tag-trine-dyrholm","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}