A hybrid documentary that pairs former members of a Danish Christian sect with celebrated actors premieres Monday in the Doc@PÖFF International Competition at the 30th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia.
Father's House traces the story of Faderhuset, a congregation whose name translates from Danish as 'Father's House,' and its evolution during the 1990s into a tightly controlled community dominated by faith, manipulation and abuse. The congregation closed in 2013, with various leaders and members later moving abroad.
Instead of conventional dramatizations, writers and directors Adam Nielsen, Andreas Koefoed and Eva Mulvad had actors recreate events from life inside the sect with guidance from people who lived through them. The film moves among reenactments, behind the scenes exchanges and interviews with former members confronting traumatic memories. The festival describes the result as 'intimate, deeply unsettling and formally inventive.'
Trine Dyrholm (The Girl With the Needle) portrays Ruth Evensen, now Ruth Kristiansen, who led the sect throughout the 1990s, while David Dencik plays former member Jerry. Laura Kronborg Kjær plays Camilla Johnson; Emma Sehested Høeg also stars. Nielsen also edited; cinematography is by Mia Mai Dengsø Graabæk and Adam Jandrup. Camera Film releases it in Danish cinemas on Nov. 19, with DR Sales handling sales.
Johnson spent seven years in Faderhuset before leaving and founding InsideOut, an NGO through which she writes books and gives talks to help others exit cults. Her connection to the film began a decade ago, when she first started telling her story publicly and met Mulvad; after Johnson wrote her second book, Mulvad asked about making a documentary together.
Mulvad and Nielsen returned with an unusual proposal: that former members help direct the actors. Johnson said she hesitated at first, unsure how it would feel to put 'the most shameful things in my life out there.' She ultimately embraced the idea, praising directors and cast. 'They took something so vulnerable and treated it with respect and care,' she said, adding that after the first day of shooting she drove home feeling profound gratitude for her freedom, 18 years after leaving the sect.
'It was never about my story,' Johnson said. 'It was about showing the mechanism. So, it's been a very healing and beautiful process.' Koefoed praised what he called a 'really genius concept.' Conventional reenactments are 'always kind of artificial,' he argued, but this production shows openly how its scenes are built, making the former members co-creators. Johnson helped select scenes and appears early in the film giving notes to Dyrholm. 'We could have done a whole series, no problem,' she said.
One especially intense sequence, which Johnson calls 'the birth scene,' places Dyrholm's Ruth opposite Kjær's Camilla. Johnson initially refused to include it, saying it involved 'some of the worst abuse I experienced in there,' but she came to see it as essential. 'This was about showing the mechanisms of losing yourself to that power when you put God on top of human control,' she said. 'I wanted people to see that and feel that.'
Koefoed hopes the film counters the tendency to dismiss cult members as weak or not smart. The people in the film are 'super smart and actually strong,' he said, people who hit a vulnerable stretch while seeking community and answers. He wants audiences to understand why people enter cults and how hard it is to leave and rebuild a life.
Johnson stressed that the subject reaches beyond Denmark: she saw the same mechanisms while traveling in America and living in Jerusalem and Israel, and she called the film timely in an insecure world where people seek faith, community and belonging. 'When questioning a human being becomes the same as questioning God, we've got a huge problem,' she said. Koefoed said the filmmakers sent the film to Father's House representatives about a month ago with two weeks to comment; they never responded.
