Two Danish documentary films, honoured lavishly at IDFA Amsterdam, "The Monastery" and "Enemies of Happiness", together with the feature film "Offscreen", and the short fiction film "Sophie" are selected for Sundance Film Festival, Utah (18 – 28 January 2007).
World Cinema Documentary CompetitionPernille Rose Grønkjær and Tju-Bang Film's "The Monastery", which received the prestigious IDFA Joris Ivens Award, and Eva Mulvad and Bastard Film's "Enemies of Happiness", winner of the IDFA Silver Wolf Award, will compete together with 14 other documentary films in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance.
"The Monastery" is a film about a man's lifeworks and dreams; about the castle he purchased 50 years ago and which he now is turning over to a group of Russian orthodox nuns.
"Enemies of Happiness" reports from the final days on the campaign trail in 2005 of a young Afghan woman, Malalai Joya, who is running in her country's democratic parliamentary elections, and has survived repeated assassination attempts.
Frontier and Shorts ProgrammeSelected also for Sundance programmes are "Offscreen" and "Sophie", two films from New Danish Screen, a Danish support programme whose first features films have met with international success during the past year.
Christoffer Boe and Alphaville Picture's feature film "Offscreen" is selected for the Frontier programme, a Sundance venue which screens films that challenge, provoke and invigorate cinema's status quo.
"Offscreen" features actor Nicolas Bro, who plays 'himself' in the leading role, and is instigator of the storyline as he makes a film about love, playing opposite his wife in actual life. This is Boe's third feature film; his second feature film "Allegro" was selected for Sundance and Venice Days in 2005.
The short fiction film, "Sophie", by Birgitte Stærmose and Nimbus Film is selected for Sundance Shorts Programme. The story is about a couple whose evening takes a radical turn after the wife, who is pregnant, asks her husband if he's ever been with a prostitute. This film has been selected as one of the 71 shorts films out of 4445 films.
Stærmose's "Small Avalanches" (2003), which screened worldwide, was a European Film Awards nominee, Best Short Fiction at Bratislava, and received the UIP Award at Edinburgh.
For further information:
Sundance Film Festival
New Danish ScreenDFI website Englishwww.dfi.dk/englishDFI article-baseThe Manifold Nature of LoveOn Fertile Foreign Ground
DFI factsheetsThe MonasteryVores lykkes fjenderOffscreen Sophie
Danish Film Institute (DFI)DFI Short & Documentary Film:Anne Marie Kürstein, +45 3374 3609, +45 4041 4697, kurstein@dfi.dkDFI Feature Films:Christian Juhl Lemche, +45 2148 8522, christianjl@dfi.dkNew Danish Screen:Vinca Wiedemann, +45 2025 8081, vincaw@dfi.dk