In Acts of Love, director Jeppe Rønde drops a match into a powder keg of faith, family, and “therapy,” then watches who’s left standing when the smoke clears. It’s the kind of movie that dares you to keep your eyes and your mind open, even when your brain is saying, “What the hell?”
Hanna (Cecilie Lassen) lives in a secluded New Age Christian community on Denmark’s west coast. The everyday routine consists of chores, community, and worship, led by Kirsten (Ann Eleonora Jørgensen). Hanna is a particularly tough case. She has buried trauma and has been physically abused to the point that she cannot have children of her own. During worship services, she prays her way through her past, guided by counseling sessions with Kirsten.
This day marks the arrival of Hanna’s brother, Jakob (Jonas Holst Schmidt). Against Hanna’s instincts, Kirsten thinks his presence might help her work through her memories, so Jakob agrees to stay while helping the church build a new building.
Jakob’s presence proves to be somewhat problematic. He’s not exactly into God and thinks the church’s rituals are weird (more on that later). At one point, Jakob plays with an invisible ball and throws it over the church building, after which one of the boys chases it for several hours.
Now, the way the church heals its members of trauma is through an extreme communal service: members take on roles in the person’s life and allow God to reenact the traumatic events through them. The members are so immersed in the trauma that they become incredibly sensitive to the emotions tied to it. It’s also a controversial practice in that sometimes the re-enactments go a bit too far.
A child lashes out in the tense communal environment of Acts of Love (2026).
“Hanna lives in a secluded New Age Christian community on Denmark’s west coast.”
To me, Acts of Love walks that line between intense drama and religious horror, but rest assured, this is an intense drama. Let’s just say that Hanna and Jakob’s childhood trauma is pretty extreme, and exploring it the church’s way opens a door to the trauma that is difficult to shut.
This film is not for everyone. I described it as a horror story, but that’s unfair. Acts of Love is more of a psychological thriller, not made the American way. We follow the siblings Hanna and Jakob down this path, and as they seek healing, it becomes very dark, very fast, and their ending may be unsettling to the uninitiated. To say any more would enter spoiler territory.
What fascinated me the most about the first half of the film was the communal church, where all the members live together as a literal flock. I’ve had friends who lived in these situations, and most ended up in what eventually became cults. Here’s a way to stay on the weird New Age side of the cult line. Again, I’ll use the word “controversial” to describe the church and its methods, and the filmmakers go out of their way to keep it on the legit side.
Suffice it to say, Acts of Love is like no other religious tale I’ve ever seen. God is framed as the good deity, but then we go down the road into crazy. In the end, I found myself fascinated by the story, but it’s not for everyone. Turn this one on if you’re looking for something very different. Fair warning: it gets weird.
For more information, visit the Acts of Love official website.
"…Fair warning: it gets weird."
