[citation needed] Kristian Levring began his career as a documentarian, editing a number of feature-length documentaries and Danish-language feature films during the first two decades of his time as a filmmaker.
The Guardian describes the film as following, "bus passengers stranded in the Namibian desert, who decide to stage their own private performance of King Lear to pass the time until help arrives.
With no decor and no costumes, in the natural light of the sun's glare, and with no recourse to the technical resources of theatre, the amateur actors study their roles; Henry writes everybody's lines out by hand, from memory."
The unsparing, invasive naturalism of digital video, which seems specially calibrated to register the play of anxiety and distress on human faces, also records an inhuman landscape of undulating dunes and blinding sky.
The juxtaposition creates a sense of loneliness and panic, a stomach-turning dread that makes the survival instinct look almost comically weak.
[16] The film follows two British expatriates and their lives in a remote Asian ivory trading station during the early 1900s, where the small community falls apart under the pressures of the foreign lands and daily struggles to survive.
[19] The film explores the issues of prescription medication on the psychology of families, following the protagonist as they try the use of antidepressants to cure his malaise stemming from workaholism.
[20] The plot is reminiscent of the narrative of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the rights were sold to IFC.