"C. Claire Thomson’s Festen monograph explores the complex and often paradoxical allegories suffused within both Vinterberg’s film and the wider Dogme movement. The book relays the significance of Festen as Dogme’s inaugural production released in 1998.Thomson’s writing also gives us a deeply personal account of Festen’s emotive resonance. The Dogme film so close to Thomson’s heart is situated around the birthday gathering of a wealthy patriarch in Denmark. The event is marred, however, by the return of his youngest son Christian who arrives to deliver a candid speech detailing, for the first time, the depraved abuse he and his recently deceased sister suffered at his hands as young children. The real merits of this book stem from these impassioned articulations of the author, surpassing the objective distance usually reserved for conversing within academic texts. It is this pathos that allows the film a greater degree of accessibility.She facilitates a discussion of Festen as a concept, one that has transposed into many forms, including numer-ous stage adaptations. She also comprises a detailed account of the Dogme tenets, particularly in relation to the practicalities of its technological application. Thomson cements Dogme’s relationship with spatial and temporal aspects of filmmaking. Vetoing the post-productive engineering that defines most film texts, she discusses Festen in relation to Dogme’s aspirations; to capture an unmanipulated truth. This extends into a dialogue that encompasses the nature of ‘history’and ‘story’ in addition to the complex tapestry of meaning the film builds around the notion of Danish national identity." - Kate Moffat, Cinema Scandinavia, Spring 2015