Nicolas Winding Refn returned to Cannes this week with his first feature film in a decade — and his most personal revelation yet. At the press conference for Her Private Hell, which premiered out of competition at the 79th Cannes Film Festival on May 18, the Danish director broke down in tears as he described dying for 25 minutes after doctors discovered a leaking heart, and how the experience hauled him back to cinema.
“Before I died, I had come to the end of my career because I didn’t have anything left in me,” Refn told the assembled press. “Suddenly, I was told that I would probably not live, but if I did they didn’t know what would happen.” He recovered, and credits the experience with giving him a reason to make films again. “I realized before I died that I’d been given a gift — I could start over again. Like how many people get a second chance? And I got a second chance from God. And I could use that for good,” he said, visibly weeping.
The film, co-written with Esti Giordani, stars Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu, Kristine Froseth, Dougray Scott, and Diego Calva. Set in a fog-choked futuristic city, it follows a young woman searching for her father while a soldier hunts for his daughter through the same hellscape, shadowed by a leather-clad killer. As the credits rolled at the Palais, Thatcher burst into tears while Refn paced and hyped the crowd into a sustained ovation.
Cannes has been Refn’s festival home for his last four films. He electrified it in 2011 with Drive, winning the best director prize. Follow-up projects Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon proved far more polarizing, with The Neon Demon drawing boos, walkouts, and audience members yelling at the screen. Her Private Hell landed somewhere in the same contested territory. On Rotten Tomatoes, 40% of reviews are currently positive, with Metacritic assigning a score of 47 out of 100.
Critics at RogerEbert.com described the film as feeling like “Refn’s Greatest Hits,” arguing the imagery that once felt provocative now arrives past its expiry date. Variety’s chief critic was sharper still, calling it a “David Lynch-on-bad-acid disaster” and writing that Refn “has become seriously deluded about what an audience wants.” More sympathetically, TheWrap praised Thatcher’s work as her “most daring yet,” comparing it at moments to Jack Nicholson in The Shining.
Cast members spoke warmly about the shoot, which ran 56 days and was filmed in sequence. Melton called Refn “one of the great auteurs in cinema,” while Froseth said he “pushes you into the deep end, but with so much love and care.”
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Refn also weighed in on AI — saying he sees it as a creative tool and teasing its involvement in a future project. “For me, it’s like a brush,” he said. Her Private Hell opens in US theaters July 24 via Neon, across 800 to 1,200 screens.
