Redoubt review – Denis Lavant is unforgettable as an oddball building a public shelter for obscure disaster

2026-03-25 - 07:20

John Skoog’s monochrome film is based on an art installation, and that shows in the pacing, but his central character is intriguing and utterly unique Denis Lavant is an intriguing and vulnerable presence, somewhere between Quasimodo and Nosferatu, in this beautifully shot monochrome feature from Swedish artist, photographer and film-maker John Skoog, developed from a short film and installation project. Lavant plays farmhand Karl-Göran Persson who, in remote southern Sweden of what could be the 1950s or 1960s, is galvanised by an official pamphlet distributed to the public informing them of what to do in case of a nuclear war; he becomes obsessed with the idea of turning his primitive shack in the middle of a field into a “redoubt” that the entire community could use if the bomb drops. (Skoog has evidently based this on a real case.) Continue reading...