19-25 January
2026
Jack Lowden plays British war poet Sigfried Sassoon, who turned World War I trauma into great poetry. Benediction shows what armed conflict does to people, but also how long after it they remain affected. War, poetry, and forbidden love are central themes running through the final film from unique British film artist Terence Davies, who died last autumn.
Sigfried Sassoon (1886-1967) is considered one of the great British war poets. Along with, among others, his friends and colleagues Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen, he wrote his experiences and trauma from the trenches into terrific poetry. Lowden (currently starring in the Apple TV series Slow Horses) plays Sassoon during and immediately following the war. Peter Capaldi plays him at the end of his life, in a film that combines real archival war footage and dramatization of Sassoon’s life and art most singularly. Benediction highlights how many who returned from the war were forever marked by it. It is, as such, an impactful anti-war film, about a man who spoke up against the grotesque sacrificing of a generation of young men on the battlefields of Europe. It is also a fascinating depiction of forbidden love between men in Britain before, during, and after the world wars.
The film was selected by film critic Terje Eidsvåg.
Terence Davies (1945–2023) is film history’s greatest Liverpudlian director. He found his international breakthrough with the autobiographical films Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992) set in Liverpool in the 1940s and -50s. The documentary collage film Of Time and the City (2008) is the definitive film about his hometown. He has also worked in America, with films like A Quiet Passion (2016) about poet Emily Dickinson, and the Edith Wharton adaptation The House of Mirth (2000). Davies never received a Palme d’Or or Oscar in his lifetime, but he received a Norwegian Amanda award for Best Foreign Feature for Distant Voices, Still Lives in 1990.
2016 A Quiet Passion
2008 Of Time and the City
2000 The House of Mirth
1992 The Long Day Closes
1988 Distant Voices, Still Lives
Kl 13:30
Fokus 1
Kl 09:00
Hålogaland Teater
Kl 21:15
Fokus 1
| Programme: | Critics' Week |
| Director: | Terence Davies |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Year: | 2021 |
| Run time: | 2h 17m |
| Screenplay: | Terence Davies |
| Cast: | Jack Lowden, Thom Ashley, Orlando Jopling |
| Dialogue: | English, French, German |
| Subtitles: | No subtitles |