With the selection of "What No One Knows" for Panorama Special, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen may look back on a proud Berlin representation – counting an award for "Rubber Tarzan" (1982), a Golden Bear nomination for "The Island on Bird Street" (1997) and a Silver Bear for "Mifune" (1999). With his new film, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen ventures into the thriller format. A sharp comment on the political climate in Denmark, the film bears the director's singular trademark: an antiauthoritarian approach to life and filmmaking.
A classic coming-of-age story is how the Danish director Natasha Arthy describes her new film "Fighter", though its combination of a young woman of Turkish background and a passionate love for kung fu is hardly conventional. Arthy’s "Miracle" was chosen for Kinderfilmfest in 2001.
After his international hit "We Shall Overcome", director Niels Arden Oplev is back with a new drama about youthful rebellion against oppressive mores. Based on a true story, "Worlds Apart" takes an unblinking look at a teenage girl’s struggles, when falling in love makes her challenge the rigid principles governing the lives of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Flemming Quist Møller and Jannik Hastrup have put their separate thumbprints all over Danish animation for close to a lifetime now. The two friends haven't worked together professionally since they made the classic "Benny’s Bathtub" in 1971. Now they have jazzed up Quist Møller's timeless Danish children's book "The Biking Gnat and the Dancing Gnat"with heapings of hot licks in their new animated feature, "A Tale of Two Mozzies".
Stine Fischer Christensen has a love affair with the camera. It loves her girlish good looks and soulful gaze. At 21, she has already demonstrated robust talent in several directions.
Nimbus Film, Denmark's third-largest production company, had a major hand in producing the very first Dogme hit, "The Celebration". The company is headquartered in Filmbyen directly across from its competitor and partner of many years, Zentropa Film, which is owned and run by such colourful figures as Lars von Trier and Peter Aalbæk Jensen. Today, as ever, the company stands for quality and professionalism. Thus, two of this year's Danish Berlinale participants, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen's "What No One Knows"(Panorama Special) and Natasha Arthy's "Fighter" (Generation 14plus) are produced by Nimbus Film.Three Nimbus producers discuss their double role as the directors' close ally and management's extended arm.
"Everything Is Relative"is one of those films where you imagine the screenplay calling for "a blind girl, a woman in labour, a soldier going off to war, two Japanese gay guys, a beauty queen from Mozambique, three praying nuns – and a partridge in a pear tree!" In other words, a film about everything and anything under the sun. Yet it's not. Under its roomy umbrella title, "Everything Is Relative"little by little gels into a personal essay on a view of life – what it means to be human as seen through one person's temperament.
"The varied nature of Danish Films may seem guaranteed to inspire intellectual vertigo, but in fact there are central overriding motifs which link many of the films," according to Steve Gravestock, programmer of Nordic films for Toronto International Film Festival since 2001.
Peter Schønau Fog's "The Art of Crying" has made it to festivals around the world and taken home several awards. Now, Final Cut Productions is busy finishing Jan Troell's "Maria Larsson's Everlasting Moment". FILM met with the people behind the small, ambitious production company for a talk about team spirit, ambition and money.