It shouldn’t be blasphemous to suggest that God was kind of a jerk in The Old Testament, but it is. God was kind of a jerk in the Old Testament. He’d turn you into salt, lock you in a whale, or send an army of locusts after you as punishment for incurring his wrath. There’s a peculiar whiplash to it all. God loves you unconditionally, yet mess up and you’ll be punished with eternal fire.

I spent a lot of my youth convinced that God was punishing me for something, much like young Lise (Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl) does in As in Heaven as soon as her mother goes into a complicated and painful premature labour. Lise finds herself on the precipice of adulthood; she’ll be leaving for school soon, and has caught the eye of the handsome (and very, very tall) Jens Peter (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt). Womanhood is a very different beast than girlhood, and throughout the course ofAs in Heaven, that will become brutally clear.

While I know that I am prone to hyperbole, I have a hard time imaging that I’m going to see a film that is as visually self-assured as As in Heaven. This is director Tea Lindberg’s debut feature film, and I’m absolutely ecstatic that she’s going to be my breakout voice of the festival. There are innumerable, jaw-dropping 16mm shots inside this film. Truly, I cannot wait to see this again, in all of it’s painful beauty.