Don’t be fooled by that angelic smile. Trine Dyrholm is ready to wreak havoc in “The Guest.”

In Mads Mengel’s drama, which will premiere at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, new father Karl (Simon Bennebjerg) prepares for his son’s baptism. Everything goes according to plan, until Karl discovers that his mother, Vibeke (Dyrholm), will also be attending.

Sold by LevelK and produced by Monolit Film.

“When she arrives, you wonder, ‘Why didn’t he invite her?!’ “He’s good company and doesn’t give a damn what other people think,” says Trine Dyrholm. Variety.

But Vibeke has more going on and her children are preparing for the worst.

“Sarah Kane’s play ‘4.48 Psycho’ has followed me throughout my career: I made it when I was 30 and 40. I did a lot of research on mental illness back then,” Dyrholm says. Now, he wanted to focus on Vibeke’s longing.

“She has all these challenges too, but you also understand that she really wants to be at this party. She wants to be around her son and her grandson.”

Mengel wanted Vibeke to “resist easy categorization.”

“People don’t usually come with a sign telling us if they deserve our trust. They can be warm, charming, polite – even affectionate – and still have a complicated past or have caused deep pain.”

He notes, “The audience is constantly negotiating their feelings for her, just as Karl does. I wanted viewers to question not only who Vibeke is, but also how quickly we judge other people.”

“The Guest” is “probably the most personal” thing he’s done so far, “but it’s not autobiographical.”

“What fascinated me was not telling my own story, but exploring something that many people can recognize: how our understanding of our parents changes as we age, especially when we start our own families. I was interested in that moment when certainty begins to crack. When the people we have spent years judging slowly become more complicated and human.”

He grew up watching Dyrholm, known for the Oscar-winning “In a Better World” (she recently directed “The Girl with the Needle” and “The Birthday Girl”) and “couldn’t have asked for a more generous collaborator” as a first-time director.

“To me, she is simply one of Denmark’s best actresses, and her reach seems almost limitless. What makes her so extraordinary is not just her technical skill. It is her deep knowledge of people.”

She is also “remarkably fearless.”

“Even after such a successful career, she still approaches each role with genuine curiosity. She’s interested in exploring, taking risks, and discovering something new about a character, and maybe about people in general. That was exactly what Vibeke needed.”

Dyrholm notes, “Karl has chosen this new family and Vibeke says, ‘This isn’t you.’ In a way, she’s right. This movie is called ‘The Guest,’ and you could say that Karl is a guest in his own life, too.”

“For these two, everything revolved around their mother. Their sister [played by Josephine Park] You can’t be present in your own life because you need to take care of it. Vibeke is a symbol of this family and of love and pain. “She is a symbol of all the struggles that must be overcome to be free.”

Dyrholm was greatly moved by the finished film.

“I think it manages to make it universal and show how we struggle with trying to love and cope with each other.”

“I’m very lucky to still have my mom, but we’ve always had conflicts. That’s how it is with moms. That’s why I told my son, ‘I’ll pay your psychiatrist now, because I’m sure there will be some problems,'” she laughs.

“Vibeke was all alone with these children. She had them when she was very young and it’s been a difficult life. She’s done what she could. We try to get away from our legacy, but the older we get, the more we accept it.”

A lot of things happen these days. But there is still much to do to put this family back together, says Mengel.

“I don’t think deeper emotional wounds can be clearly resolved over the course of a weekend. That would have seemed dishonest to me.”

“What interested me was something smaller, but perhaps more significant: the possibility that people can take a single step towards each other. Life rarely gives us a perfect ending, but sometimes it gives us the opportunity to start again.”