Adam's Apples

Adam's Apples is a 2005 dark comedy from Denmark and Germany, written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen. It follows Adam, a neo-Nazi just released from prison, who is sent to do community service at a small church. There he meets Ivan, a Protestant pastor who runs a rehabilitation programme for ex-convicts and who greets everyone with unshakable optimism. Adam quickly clashes with Ivan's unrelenting kindness, and the pastor gives him a simple task: to bake an apple pie from the fruit of the tree outside the church. Other men staying at the parish include an alcoholic and a robber. The hostility between the two men grows, and their struggle over guilt, faith and forgiveness takes a violent turn as Adam sets out to prove that Ivan's cheerful view of the world cannot be right.

The film is the fourth feature Jensen directed, following Flickering Lights and The Green Butchers. Mads Mikkelsen plays Ivan opposite Ulrich Thomsen as Adam, with Paprika Steen, Ole Thestrup, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Nicolas Bro in supporting roles. It runs 95 minutes and was made for about 4 million dollars.

More than twenty years after release, it holds a 7.7 rating on IMDb from around 59,000 votes and a 7.5 on TMDB from over 800 votes, while the critics' score stands at 6.6 from 37 reviews, so general audiences have rated it higher than critics did.