Holiday
Swedish writer-director Isabella Eklöf makes a powerful, unsettling statement with her debut feature, which chronicles the volatile tensions between drug lord Michael (Lai Yde) and his glamorous young girlfriend, Sascha (Vic Carmen Sonne), during a sizzling summer vacation on the Turkish Riviera. HOLIDAY is a blaze of bright colors, gorgeous outfits, luxury villas and sunny beachscapes, but violence and toxic masculinity are ever present, including a sickeningly graphic rape scene shot with jarringly cool detachment. Eklöf’s stylish thriller is purposely spare on dialogue or psychological shading, provocatively daring audiences not to enjoy its slick, sexy, nauseating horror.
Vic Carmen Sonne, Lai Yde, Thijs Römer
- Notes From Kitty GreenA cheeky film about a young woman on holiday with her drug-dealer boyfriend that also contains one of the most devastating depictions of sexual violence I’ve seen onscreen. Released at the beginning of the #MeToo movement, Eklöf’s film plays with gender dynamics in its own way.
