A Second Chance

A Second Chance is a 2014 Danish thriller film directed by Susanne Bier. The film stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Ulrich Thomsen, Maria Bonnevie, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Lykke May Andersen. It was screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. Plot Police detective Andreas and his partner Simon are called to investigate an argument in a junkie couple's badly rundown flat, where they discover a child in a wardrobe lying in its own excrement. The seven-week-old child Sofus is dirty and hungry but after he has been examined by Social Services they realize he is in good health. Because of that he cannot be taken from his parents Tristan and Sanne, despite the fact that they are well-known drug addicts. Andreas himself has a seven-week-old child called Alexander with his wife Anne. They love him dearly and he is well looked after, but he is not an easy child. Soon Anne is unable to cope with Alexander because of her own mental instability. One early morning Andreas wakes up with Anne crying and a dead Alexander. A distraught Anne threatens to kill herself should Andreas call an ambulance – who'd take Alexander from her. After he has calmed down his wife and convinced her to take sleeping pills, Andreas takes the dead baby to the hospital. Waiting in the hospital's parking lot, he then decides to swap the babies and breaks into Tristan and Sanne's flat, where the parents are sleeping off a high. Anne is distraught. She refuses to accept the baby Andreas brings as her own. The next morning Tristan notices that Sofus is dead. Sanne tells her husband that the dead baby is not her son. Tristan fears that he and Sanne will go to prison and takes their stroller to a busy street, where he pretends that someone has abducted his child from it. Andreas and Simon, who are ordered to investigate, repeatedly interrogate Tristan and Sanne concerning the whereabouts of the dead baby (Alexander).