Synopsis
A Fortunate Man (Lykke-Per, 2018) is Bille August's sweeping Danish drama, available to watch online on iFILM. In late-19th-century Denmark, the son of a stern country pastor flees rural Jutland for Copenhagen, determined to become an engineer and rewrite his own fate.
He even sheds his name — Peter becomes Per — and throws himself into an audacious plan: a network of canals and wind power that would transform the west of the country. In the capital he falls in with a wealthy Jewish family and wins the heart of their eldest daughter, Jakobe. Doors open, his star rises. Yet the years under his father's roof left marks too deep to outrun, and the same pride that drives Per forward keeps dragging him back down.
The film adapts the novel by Nobel laureate Henrik Pontoppidan, a cornerstone of Danish literature, and August — twice a Palme d'Or winner — lets it unfold at the unhurried pace of a true coming-of-age epic across 167 minutes. Esben Smed plays Per as a man you can neither quite love nor quite dismiss. It rewards anyone drawn to rich period storytelling about a person who becomes his own worst enemy. Stream A Fortunate Man (2018) online on iFILM.
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