Authenticity is key in Danish director Frelle Petersen’s third feature film Forever, which is in the main competition at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. In a very naturalistic style, the film follows a tight-knit family of four in the rural part of Southern Denmark. We are introduced to them at an intimate birthday celebration at the house of the parents, Egon (Ole Sørensen) and Maren (Mette Munk Plum). The two grown children are present to prepare the breakfast and the traditions that they have honored since childhood are kept alive and everything is as it has always been. Until it is not.

Without showing the death of the son of the family, everything in the family changes when he is suddenly gone. We see how the three remaining family members struggle to keep the daily routine, how the traditions are now no longer quite the same, and how they all deal with grief in different ways. Where once the only concern was Line’s (Jette Søndergaard) issues with getting pregnant, the harmonious family dynamic is no more.

We spoke to Petersen and his lead actress Søndergaard at the festival in San Sebastian about his film. 

What was it like being selected for the main competition at San Sebastian?

Petersen: I was thrilled. It is a big thing, especially for a film like this. It has its own artistic and visual language. You always wonder what is going to happen with a film that you spend three years working on, and when I received the news that it was going to be in the main competition here, I was so thrilled as it is my biggest achievement to be in a competition like this.

What was it like watching it with an audience?

Søndergaard: I was anxious about if they would understand it. It is a foreign language film, and even in Denmark it is a little exotic because it takes place in Southern Denmark, so your hope is that they will get it and get sucked into this family’s life and emotions. It was wonderful to hear the laughter and the sighs. When the film was over, there was an enormous spotlight on us, which we did not know in advance and it was rather breathtaking when they were clapping. I locked eyes with a guy who was crying and who yelled ‘thank you!’ I had to work so hard on not crying. It was very touching that people feel heard, especially the ones who have experienced this kind of grief. That is one thing that is so wonderful about this script that people get a chance to see themselves on screen.

You have worked together on the feature films Hundeliv (2016) and Uncle (2019). Frelle, did you write the script with Jette in mind?

Petersen: Yes, she had a very small part in my first feature film and I wrote the lead character in Uncle for her and her real uncle. We continued the collaboration and I wrote the script with her in mind.

Jette, what is it about his script writing that appeals to you?

Søndergaard: I love the fact that Frelle writes so realistically. He does not create these overly dramatic scenes, he just looks at people and our innermost feeling, so we as actors just get to portray people and real feelings. He allows us the time with the slow pace to actually just be and be in our emotions, and hopefully, that translates so other people feel it too. You don’t necessarily have to put words on it. You can just sense our innermost feelings. I love that. It is just very well written. He gives us space and he is just really good at talking too. We talk before the script is written.

Was that a deliberate choice to not explain the son’s cause of death?

Petersen: What interested me was the grief process in a family and what it does to a family.  You have lived with your family your whole life and those are probably the people that you know the best. When a tragedy hits you like this, you have to start all over and you can be very surprised by how your mother, father, brother, sister, son or daughter reacts to grief. It becomes difficult and you have to find a new way of establishing the family again. That was interesting to me and I wanted that to be the focus of the film.

All of the people that I met with while doing research had lost someone to cancer, suicide, accident – all different kinds of things – and I also met someone who studies grief and this person said that we are very basic when it comes to people dealing with grief. There are basically three groups and when I thought of explaining the cause of death, it would be very specific about a family losing a son to cancer for instance and I was afraid that the audience would not connect in the same way, because now they could distance themselves from it if they had never experienced that specific thing. But many people have experienced a loss and thus they can relate to it and that was what I sought to do. That should be the focus.

The film’s title in Danish is For the Rest of Life and not Forever, which is the English title. Can you talk about the significance of the title for you?

Petersen: When I was doing the research, it was something that was mentioned all the time. People said that to some extent you get back to living a normal life but it is never going to be normal because the grief will follow you for the rest of your life. It will come in many waves and sometimes at the most inconvenient times. Sometimes it is very obvious and comes at special occasions like Christmas and birthdays and at family traditions, but it comes up in waves and can be like a roller coaster. That is why I created that symbolic scene at the end.

We also talked a lot about maintaining the memories of the son, you also do that for the rest of your life. He will always be there for the rest of your life. A lot of people wrote to me after they had seen the film, and one was a mother who had lost her daughter and she wanted to ask me questions about the mother who at the very end is at a grief support group. At that point, she said, ‘His name is Tobias,’ and it is the first time you hear the name of the son, and she wanted to know whether she had said ‘is’ or ‘was’ and that was important for her. I told her that she had said ‘is Tobias’ as if he is still alive because for her, he will always be there. The woman told me that she had not been able to say that her daughter ‘is’ and that she was speaking about her in past tense.

Søndergaard: She wanted to but she did not feel that people would accept that. So it meant so much for her to hear the mother say that in the film because it gave her the feeling that she could do that too. She really wanted to.

In a way, the film is also a portrait of Southern Denmark. What does this part of the country mean to you both personally?

Petersen: I was born and raised in this region. I’ve lived there for 21 years and a big part of my family still lives there. I really love South Jutland and I love coming back to visit and to work there. I love the local community and it just feels like home to me. People living in this region are really happy that I make these films because it’s extremely rare that we get to see this part of Denmark portrayed in film and TV series.

It is also important for me to have the actors speak with the very specific dialect we have in South Jutland. Actually, we have to subtitle the film in Danish for the Danish audience even though they speak Danish. I love that. We have many different dialects across our little country, but there’s a risk that they will die out with younger generations, which is a shame.

Flags are a very common way to celebrate birthdays in Denmark. Can you explain this use of the flag?

Petersen: It is funny because a Japanese man asked me yesterday whether it was common to do this because it was very different in Japan. It seemed almost like a political statement to him. He asked why we use it at a funeral and also at a birthday. I really did not realize that this was an issue. In Denmark, if you have a house and a garden, you very likely also have a flagpole. You use it for these occasions and it can be both birthdays and weddings and also funerals.