Road trip movies, broadly speaking, tend to either follow epic, beautiful adventures — or nail-biting, tension-filled escapes. A Day and a Half, the suspense-laden directorial debut from Fares Fares (star of Westworld and Chernobyl) is most certainly in the second category.
In the film, which is inspired by true events, Artan (Alexej Manvelov), desperate to be reunited with his daughter, takes his ex-wife, Louise (Alma Pöysti), hostage — along with a police officer, Lukas (Fares). Laced with a dangerous undercurrent, their winding day-and-a-half journey takes them throughout rural Sweden in the middle of a hot summer, with police closely tailing them.
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Estranged from his ex-wife, Louise (Pöysti), who has custody of their young daughter, Cassandra, Artan (Manvelov) storms into the health clinic where Louise works, insisting on seeing her immediately. And when he isn’t allowed to, he pulls out a gun. Patients and co-workers hit the floor. In the standoff that ensues, Artan holds the gun to Louise’s head as he demands to know Cassandra’s whereabouts. Police officer Lukas (Fares) intervenes, attempting to negotiate with an increasingly emotional and unstable Artan — and defuse the terrifying situation.
As crowds of onlookers and news crews gather outside, Lukas brokers an unusual deal in order to prevent Artan from pulling the trigger. And in moments, Lukas is at the wheel, with Artan training a gun on Louise in the back seat, a fleet of police vehicles following them. Artan’s destination is Louise’s father’s house, where he thinks Cassandra is staying. Stunning forests, fields, lakes, and coastlines sweep past the windows, but every stop along the way presents a new and urgent threat. Sensing Artan’s increasingly distraught state, Lukas begins to fill the tense silences with his own life story — revealing that perhaps he and Artan and Louise have more in common than they think.
Though the road trip that propels A Day and a Half is thankfully unlike most, like all road movies, it’s a story where a changing landscape means surprising turns and revelations for its characters too. As the road grows dark and rough, the complicated and shocking stories of what brought them to this point come to light.
No, it’s not based on a book.
Partly. Though inspired by a real-life incident that occurred in Sweden, the script that Fares co-wrote with journalist and first-time feature screenwriter Peter Smirnakos is entirely fictional. As Fares told Vogue Scandinavia, “It was about a man who entered a doctor’s office with a pistol and tried to force his ex-wife to tell them where she had their child. And the police come, and well... It was just a couple of lines, very short, but I saw a love story.”
A Day and a Half takes place all over rural Sweden. It was filmed in the country’s lakeside and coastal regions.
