There’s no kindness without cruelty, and no joy without sorrow, in The Girl with the Needle, Magnus von Horn’s oppressively bleak inspired-by-real-events tale of female misery in post-WWI Denmark.

This poignantly pain-stricken black-and-white period piece is not without its brief moments of hope. Yet they only emerge at the end of an arduous portrait of one woman’s efforts to find the comfort and love she craves—a mission that ultimately puts her into contact with an unconventional serial killer. Premiering at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, it’s as grim, and transfixing, as they come.

In a Copenhagen that frequently resembles a medieval village, Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) works in a sewing factory that doesn’t pay her enough to afford her flat, from which she’s unceremoniously evicted at the film’s outset by a landlord who can no longer allow his compassion to overshadow his need for rent. This opening calamity is shot by von Horn in harried 4:3 handheld that puts a premium on movement and, in particular, Karoline’s feet—an ironic commentary on the lack of social mobility in this early 20th-century society.

For Karoline, whose husband has not returned from the war, there’s simply struggle, and Sonne’s eyes (twice spied in ultra-close-up) radiate intense anguish and weariness, Even so, she’s momentarily heartened by a meeting with the factory’s tall, dapper boss Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), who denies her request for widower’s compensation (since her spouse has not been found) but kindly agrees to further inquire into her husband’s whereabouts.

A still from The Girl With the........

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