'Unruly' director Malou Reymann and star Emilie Kroyer Koppel on the film's unique subject matter - Interview
4:58 | Uploaded on Sep 13, 2022
Maren (Emilie Kroyer Koppel) is 16 and the eldest of her siblings, all of whom live in poverty with their single mother in 1930s Denmark. Maren goes out to clubs at night, to her mother's displeasure. When she's late to work too many times, Maren is let go from the factory where she and her mother work as seamstresses.
The authorities decide to step in and when Maren is too defiant to answer Doctor Wildenskov's (Anders Heinrichsen) simple questions, he diagnoses her as being "slightly mentally deficient and antisocial."
He sends her to an island asylum on Sprogø, run by the Miss Nielsen (Lene Maria Christensen). When Maren learns the other women have been there for years, she becomes desperate and decides she will do anything to escape.