Loosely inspired by Thomas Vinterberg's own childhood experiences, this is his finest film since The Celebration. Set in the 1970s, it finds architect Erik, his TV presenter wife Anna and their teenage daughter Freja setting up a commune-mainly but not exclusively with old friends-in the rambling family home Erik's inherited. Anna, especially, hopes to widen their horizons a little. So be it-though not quite as she envisaged...

Crucial to this eminently enjoyable movie is that Vinterberg never patronizes commune ideals as misguided or doomed to failure: for the most part the mood is kept light, portraying the experiment in a positive light. Even when things darken, focusing on the tensions between freedom, self-determination and shared responsibility, Vinterberg favors engrossing, psychologically astute drama over social comment. The performances are excellent, with Trine Dyrholm and Ulrich Thomsen especially impressive as Anna and Erik. If Dyrholm has the more dramatically complex role, Thomsen provides a supremely subtle (and frequently very funny) study of a man trapped in a state of almost constant, quiet and barely concealed confusion.

Winner: Best Actress, Berlin