This dark and Gothic Scandi-noir grabs you by the throat and barely let’s up.

Shot in gorgeous black-and-white and set in the muddy streets of Denmark in the 20s, director Magnus von Horn and co-writer Line Langebek Knudsen have based this on a true and sensational story of the time. Karoline  (a mesmerising Vic Carmen Sonne) can’t afford her rent and barely scrapes by with her wage as a seamstress in a linen factory, making uniforms for the Great War. She is a widow but her husband disappeared during the war and so she receives no financial help as there is no proof that he is actually dead.

She’s a bit of an innocent, easily drawn into an affair with the charming factory manager (Joachim Fjelstrup) and we know this is not going to end well. Pregnant, she is sure that he will marry her but his Baroness mother quickly puts a stop to that. Losing her job at the same time, she is in a desperate situation. There are some fairly harrowing scenes when she tries to end her pregnancy, made more bearable in black-and-white, and this brings her into the orbit of ‘kindly’ sweet shop owner Dagmar (a powerhouse performance from Trine Dyrholm) who promises a solution.

I don’t want to go into the plot too much as there are some aspects of it that are genuinely gripping and one scene in particular that caused a collective gasp in the cinema. It’s not easy watching but it all somehow feels sadly inevitable. The factual elements are about Dagmar, with Karoline I assume a fictional element as our eyes and ears and faltering moral compass in what must have been a difficult and desperate time for women.

It’s darkly gorgeous, Nosferatu crossed with a Dorothea Lange portrait. It won’t be for everyone but if you see it, it will stay lodged in your mind.