The Celebration / Festen / Торжество (1998)

In "The Celebration," Danish director Thomas Vinterberg explores the explosions that occur when family tensions reach critical mass. The film, which played at the New York Film Festival and won a special jury prize at Cannes, explores the ties (and nooses) that bind when a Danish family reunites at a country retreat to commemorate the family patriarch's 60th birthday. Close on the heels of one sister's suicide, the patriarch's three surviving children bear their own baggage as they buckle under the weight of a loss born of dark deeds. What begins as a birthday party evolves into a bloodletting when Christian, the eldest son, decides he can no longer keep silent about his father's past transgressions.
A cinematic experiment shot entirely on a hand-held digital video camera, "The Celebration" (in release from October Films) is the first film made in accordance with principles developed by Dogme 95, a group of Danish directors opposed to "the auteur concept, make-up, illusions, and dramaturgical predictability" (Lars Von Trier's "The Idiots" is the second Dogme 95 film). The members of the so-called Dogme 95 Brotherhood–Von Trier, Vinterberg, Kristian Levring, and Soren Kragh Jacobsen–must sign a "Vow of Chastity" that certifies their commitment to rules intended to "force the truth out of [a director's] characters and settings."