At a countryside manor an annual feast is being prepared. It is to be an all-out effort to celebrate the revered family patriarch. Helge Klingenfelt is turning 60 and everyone has been invited. Friends, family and the ones closest to Helge’s heart - his loving wife Else and their three grown-up children: Christian, Michael and Helene. As the guests arrive, Helge summons his eldest son Christian to a meeting. In his office, he asks Christian to make a speech in commemoration of Christian’s twin sister Linda, who died the year before. But when Christian drops a bombshell, the party unravels in darkly comic fashion.

Faithful to the no-frills, back-to-basics tenets of Dogme, Vinterberg (The Hunt, Another Round) shows how sometimes a peaceful facade hides explosive family secrets.

"Mixes farce and tragedy so completely that it challenges us to respond." - Roger Ebert