The Hunt - The Consequences of a Powerful Lie

The Hunt is a Danish 2012 movie, directed by Thomas Vinterberg, and starring one of the most talented Danish actors, Mads Mikkelsen who plays Lucas, a kindergarten teacher living in a small Danish village. This is one of the most powerful performances by Mads, and probably one of the most successful and beautiful Danish movies of all time. The film competed in the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, where Mads Mikkelsen won the award for best actor and was also nominated by the Academy in the Best Foreign Film Category, and by the Hollywood Foreign Press for the Golden Globe award in the same category.

The movie revolves around Mads’s character Lucas, a divorced kindergarten teacher who struggles to maintain any kind of relationship with his estranged son, whose life begins to crumble when Klara, one of his kindergarten students and the daughter of his best friend Theo, accuses him of sexual abuse. Drawing on a memory of a pornographic picture that her brother showed her, the confused child leads the kindergarten director to suspect that Lucas indecently exposed himself to her. Although Lucas is a respected pillar of the community, this kind of accusation is not taken lightly. 

All of the adults in the community believe the director’s story of abuse, even though Klara was interviewed with leading questions that furthermore confused the child and later on contradicted her story, everyone shifted their perception of Lucas. From being one of the most respected teachers, friends, and members of the community, now he is the one on the receiving end of the abuse by all of his now-former friends. There is not a single one that doesn’t believe that he is a pedophile. 

The Hunt is one of those movies that gives you chills, leaves you in disbelief of everything that happens, makes you compassionate towards Lucas, but at the same time completely understands everyone’s reaction towards him. It is amazing how his life completely changed in the blink of an eye, despite his innocence.