28

SATURDAY

Last year’s The Celebration, an unlikely art-house hit, announced the stateside arrival of Thomas Vinterberg, a 30-year-old Danish director with a flair for camera pirouettes and an apparent grudge against the bourgeois family. Investigating the director’s past, the American Film Institute has discovered Vinterberg’s 1996 film, The Greatest Heroes, which would seem to have a similar thing about bad dads. This road movie is the tale of two troublemakers, Karsten and Peter, who head for Sweden with Karsten’s 12-year-old daughter, Louise, in the back seat. Louise doesn’t know that Karsten is a bank robber who’s only been released from prison for the weekend, but even if she did she’d probably prefer him to the abusive stepfather she’s fleeing—especially since the two men do their best to entertain their guest while on their misbegotten trek. At 4:45 p.m. at the Kennedy Center’s American Film Institute National Film Theater. $6.50. (202) 785-4600. (Mark Jenkins)