Pure

This moving film debut about class, power, art, love and Facebook touched a sensitive nerve for many film juries. Pure is carried by the actress Vikander, who plays a closed, tormented young woman looking for something ‘pure’, a desire she recognises in Mozart’s Requiem.

Katarina (20) fears she will end up like her mother: unemployed, broke and too often drunk. Prospects in the poor outer suburbs of Gothenburg are sombre and Katarina’s untrained jobs only last briefly. Her discovery of Mozart’s Requiem on YouTube offers a ray of light. ‘Since then, they haven’t been able to get at me anymore,’ she says. The classical piece represents the happiness she so desires.

When she is able to get a job as a receptionist at the city concert hall, she does not hesitate. She sucks up all the new experiences like a sponge. Another and better life beckons; certainly when the married conductor seems to believe in her intellectual capacities.

Langseth makes his debut as a feature director with this sensitive quest for identity, with a protagonist who acts naturally, whose beautiful face reveals a wide variety of emotions. Especially when she listens to compositions by Mozart, Bach and Beethoven, performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. The classical music is subtly juxtaposed with the score by Per-Erik Winberg. –IFFR