Mirush (Blodsband)

As Marius Holst's family drama Mirush commences, the young Slavic man of the title decides to find and rebuild a relationship with his long-estranged father. Mirush makes a grueling transcontinental journey from Kosovo, Serbia to Oslo, Norway, where the old man runs a restaurant. Father and son do indeed become reacquainted with each other, but as this occurs, Mirush realizes some deeply upsetting and disturbing truths about his dad - including the considerable debt he bears to the Albanian mafia and several pivotal character flaws. As Holst traces the contours of their relationship, he uses it to explore themes of familial estrangement and absenteeism, the indelibility of paternal legacies and the difficulty of making a clean break from one's past, no matter how tortured and dysfunctional.