Every year it gets more difficult for Jens, a widower, to wrest a harvest big enough to feed his daughter Signe and his two nephews from their meagre plot of land. There’s often not even enough food for their own family. And their decline is apparent to everyone: at church, the pastor moves the family from the front to the back row of pews. To ensure their survival, Jens must decide whether he will sell a piece of his land to a rich Swedish farmer – and sacrifice his daughter’s happiness. 70-year-old veteran actor Jesper Christensen plays the farmer with starkly relentless persistence as he continues sinking deeper into quiet despair. “Before the Frost” is a portrait of the 18th-century Danish life that severely tested farmers. It displays the violence of nature in brittle but stunning images.