'Acts of Love' Arrives on Streaming

Releasing today from Breaking Glass Pictures, Acts of Love is a quietly devastating psychological drama that lingers long after the final frame. Directed by acclaimed Danish filmmaker Jeppe Rønde, the film arrives on major streaming platforms following its celebrated world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, bringing with it an unsettling meditation on devotion, healing, and the human longing to belong.

At its core, Acts of Love explores what happens when care and control become dangerously intertwined. Set within a secluded New Age Christian community, the film follows Hanna (Cecilie Lassen), a woman seeking refuge from personal trauma who finds solace in a collective that promises rebirth, recovery, and unconditional love. What initially appears to be a sanctuary built on compassion and shared vulnerability gradually reveals deeper, more troubling undercurrents—where emotional intimacy is encouraged, but personal autonomy is quietly eroded.

For Rønde, the film is deeply personal. Rather than approaching trauma as an abstract concept, he draws from lived experience shaped by instability, blurred boundaries, and an intense sibling bond forged through survival. “The film grew out of a need to bring what lives in silence into the light,” Rønde explains. “I wanted to look at how love can be protective and destructive at the same time. How care can emerge from harm, and how human connection can carry both healing and profound discomfort.”

Importantly, Acts of Love refuses easy resolutions. “Trauma is never clean or one-dimensional,” he adds. “I wasn’t interested in resolving that paradox, but in staying with it.”

That paradox is embodied in the commune itself. Rooted in collective bonding and radical emotional openness, the group employs unconventional , and often disturbing, rituals to process pain. Members reenact one another’s past traumas through intense role-playing exercises, blurring the line between therapy, performance, and coercion. These sequences are among the film’s most hypnotic moments, shot with fluid camerawork and bathed in warm, natural light that contrasts sharply with the emotional unease they provoke. The result is an atmosphere that feels serene on the surface, yet deeply disquieting beneath.

The fragile equilibrium of the community is shattered by the arrival of Hanna’s brother Jakob (Jonas Holst Schmidt), whose urgent determination to bring his sister home introduces an outsider’s perspective and a growing sense of threat. Jakob’s presence forces Hanna, and the audience, to confront the central question driving the film: is this community a place of genuine healing, or a structure built on subtle manipulation and obedience?

The siblings’ strained relationship forms the emotional backbone of Acts of Love. Shaped by unresolved history and suppressed emotions, their bond mirrors the film’s broader themes of loyalty, protection, and control. Schmidt delivers a raw, desperate performance as Jakob, capturing both his fear of losing his sister and his inability to fully understand her need to stay. Lassen, meanwhile, portrays Hanna with remarkable restraint, balancing emotional distance with unwavering devotion to the community she believes has saved her. Their performances are complemented by a strong ensemble cast, including Ann Eleonora Jørgensen, Miilu Lindberg Boassen, Connie Kristoffersen, and Henrik Birch, whose naturalistic performances lend the film an unsettling realism.

Breaking Glass Pictures CEO Rich Wolff describes Acts of Love as “a rare and powerful film that immerses audiences in the world of a secluded community where the boundaries of personal freedom are tested and, at times, stretched beyond what should ever be accepted.” He adds, “Breaking Glass Pictures is not afraid to release films that explore sensitive and challenging subject matter,” a mission the distributor has long embraced through its support of bold, thought-provoking independent cinema.

Beyond its immediate narrative, Acts of Love functions as a broader meditation on belief and belonging. Rønde is particularly interested in what happens “the moment when trust turns into obedience, and when the promise of inclusion quietly produces exclusion.” Rather than prescribing answers, the film invites reflection; asking viewers to consider where their own sense of belonging comes from, and what they might be willing to sacrifice in order to feel held by a community.

That ambition has resonated with international partners as well. Susan Wendt, Managing Director of Trust Nordisk, praised the collaboration, noting, “We are thrilled to be partnering once again with Breaking Glass Pictures and are confident they will do exceptional work with Acts of Love.”

Now available on all major streaming platforms, Acts of Love is a challenging, deeply human film that resists easy categorization. It is unsettling without being sensational, compassionate without being comforting, and ultimately leaves viewers grappling with the complex, often contradictory forces that shape how—and where—we choose to place our trust.