The Birdcatcher review - ropey rural wartime thriller
(The Guardian Norway)

Disguising herself as a boy, a Jewish girl escapes the Nazis by getting job on a Norwegian farm in this hammy Euro-dramaFads may change, tastes may come and fashions may go, but one thing seems constant: an inexhaustible market for ropey, hammy Euro-puddingish, lite-drama films set in the 1940s. Here´s another such, set in Nazi-occupied Norway, written by Trond Morten Christensen and directed by British film-maker Ross Clarke. It is avowedly based on a composite of real cases.The Danish star Sarah-Sofie Boussnina (who was Martha in the recent Mary Magdalene, with Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus) plays Esther, a Jewish girl in Trondheim who escapes a Nazi roundup and flees into the countryside. She winds up disguising herself as a boy and getting a job at a farm owned by Norwegian collaborationist Johann (Jakob Cedergren) whose wife Anna (Laura Birn) is having an affair with a German officer (August Diehl). Continue reading...