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Exclusive: Production is underway on the Danish island of Funen on Girl Beast with a cast of Danish stars including Trine Dyrholm.

Girl Beast is the debut feature of Danish filmmaker Selma Sunniva, adapted from Cecilie Lind’s 2022 novel of the same name by Sunniva and Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen. The psychological drama explores how childhood trauma and dysfunctional relationships shape identity and sexuality in the teenage years of a young girl called Sara.

Newcomer Rebecca Ellen plays the lead role, having been discovered following a casting search of 300 young women. Joining Ellen on the cast are Melina Raja, The Girl With The Needle actress Dyrholm,...

Isabella Eklöf’s latest film Kalak is a loose adaptation of the autobiography by Danish-Norwegian author Kim Leine - who helped write the script along with Eklöf and Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen. It’s a tough and raw watch that tracks Jan (Emil Johnsen), a nurse who was abused by his father (Søren Hellerup), whose lingering trauma makes his life in Greenland with his family become increasingly unstable.

Although it is a personal work, the Swedish filmmaker, who sat down for a chat with us after the film's world premiere in competition at San Sebastian Film Festival, says she took a robust approach.

Isabella Eklöf: 'There's stuff in the film that did not happen to him, but that happened to me' Photo: Iñaki Luis “I don't think I need to respect his personal story, to be honest, because we are very aware that it’s a piece of cinema. It's not a book,...

Sweden’s Isabella Eklöf has followed up her acclaimed debut “Holiday” with the Greenland-set “Kalak,” this time around opting for a male protagonist.

“He’s a guy, but the story is exactly the same,” she says.

“It’s still about sexual assault and ‘restaging’ your trauma, or looking for family and connection, but I have never explored that perspective before. An artist should be able to make art about anything, but it was strangely difficult. He does become more of a perpetrator. Why? I am not sure. Just because he has a dick, he becomes more dangerous.”

Eklöf, who previously co-wrote Ali Abbasi’s “Border,” based the story on an autobiographical novel by Kim Leine, with both of them writing alongside Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen.

Produced by Maria Møller Kjeldgaard (Manna Film), “Kalak’s” production partners take in Mer Film (Norway), Momento Film and Film i Väst (Sweden), Made (Finland), Dutch...

Rolf de Heer’s The Survival of Kindness, a stark, and dialog-free dystopian fable about racism and the legacy of colonialism, has won over international film critics at this year’s Berlinale, taking the top prize for best film as picked by the Fipresci jury. Produced by Vertigo Productions and Triptych Pictures, The Survival of Kindness is being sold worldwide by Fandango.

Bas Devos’ Here, a quietly romantic drama about a construction worker and a scientist who cross paths and start to help one another, took the Fipresci prize for best film screening in Berlin’s Encounters section. The feature, produced by Belgian firm Quetzalcoatl, is being sold worldwide by China’s Rediance

The Quiet Migration, the narrative feature debut of director Malene Choi (The Return), won the Fipresci best film prize for the Panorama section. Won Riedel-Clausen stars in the film as the 19-year-old Carl, born in South Korea,...

Kalak

We still think about her breakout directorial debut and we were filled with glee when we learned that Isabella Eklöf moved into her sophomore feature packing her bags for Denmark and Greenland for Kalak. Production took place sometime around September and producer Marie Møller Kjeldgaard might look to premiere at a Euro-fest coming ’23. 2018’s Holiday was a big deal for actress Vic Carmen Sonne, this film sees Asta Kamma August and Emil Johnsen topline. Eklöf has worked in television between features and this project was co-written by Kim Leine and Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen – this is described as a harrowing drama based on Leine’s own childhood trauma and experience of working as a nurse in Nuuk, and a take of the complex relations between Denmark and Greenland.…...

Danish filmmaker Malene Choi previously directed The Return.

TrustNordisk has boarded international sales for The Quiet Migration, which will have its world premiere in Berlinale Panorama.

Malene Choi writes and directs in her fiction feature debut, after previously making the hybrid documentary-fiction project The Return, which premiered at Rotterdam in 2018.

The drama is about Carl, 19, who lives a quiet life in the Danish countryside with his adoptive parents, who expect him to take over the family farm one day. But he begins to feel the pull of two worlds – his Danish home and his native homeland, South Korea. The cast...

In terms of new trauma triggering old trauma experiences, her debut film Holiday was no walk in the park and now for Isabella Eklöf‘s sophomore film, we can expect wounds of a personal and collective nature. Screen Daily reports that production begins today on Kalak – with Emil Johnsen toplining. Asta Kamma August, Søren Hellerup, Berda Larsen, Connie Kristoffersen and Hans-Jukku Noahsen also join the project. Eklöf will reteam with her cinematographer in Nadim Carlsen. Co-written with Kim Leine and Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen, adapted from Leine’s debut novel of the same name, Manna Film’s Maria Møller Kjeldgaard produces a project that has received a ton of Scandi support.…...

Eklöf previously directed Sundance 2018 selection Holiday.

Danish filmmaker Isabella Eklöf today (September 20) starts shooting her second feature Kalak in Copenhagen, followed by a shoot in Nuuk and Kulusuk in Greenland.

Eklöf previously directed Sundance 2018 selection Holiday and co-wrote Border with Ali Abbasi and John Ajvide Lindqvist, as well as directing episodes of Servant for Apple and Industry for HBO Max.

She wrote the Kalak script alongside Kim Leine and Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen, adapted from Leine’s debut novel of the same name.

The story follows Jan, a nurse who is also a father, who was sexually abused by his father as a teenager.

A Frankensteinian mashup of sci-fi and torture-porn horror tropes, . While there are vague pretensions toward seriousness in Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen’s screenplay and Jens Dahl’s direction, this thriller ends up discomfitingly most reminiscent of 1970s Wip (women in prison) and Nazisploitation grindhouse fare, as well as gamy mainstream serial-killer potboilers like “Kiss the Girls.” Well-made but more than a bit ick, it’s being released to stateside digital formats by Uncork’d Entertainment on Jan. 11.

Mia (Sara Hjort Ditlevsen) is an equestrian training for the Olympics. She seems more comfortable in the company of her horse than husband Thomas (Anders Heinrichsen), though the complexities of their relationship (including apparent separate sexual peccadilloes) never get more than hinted at. In any case, such nuances soon prove irrelevant when circumstances fatefully entangle his home and work life.

He’s employed as financial chief for a shadowy project by one Dr. Isabel Ruben...

Filming began on August 30 and runs until October 8.

Danish filmmaker Malene Choi has started production on her new feature The Quiet Migration, in the countryside on the Djursland peninsula in Denmark.

Filming began on August 30, and will continue until October 8.

Choi’s last feature was the 2018 documentary/fiction hybrid The Return, which world premiered in Rotterdam and played dozens of other festivals including Goteborg, Vilnius, Cph:dox, Hot Docs, Seattle, New Horizons and Edinburgh.

The Quiet Migration, her first fully fictional feature, also looks at the consequences and complexity of transnational adoption, as seen in the story of Carl, originally from...

Stars: Sara Hjort Ditlevsen, Anders Heinrichsen, Morten Holst, Signe Egholm Olsen, Eeva Putro, Jens Andersen, David Bateson | Written by Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen | Directed by Jens Dahl

A renowned health supplement company, run by a ruthless businesswoman, is selecting and abducting young women as part of an experiment bio-hacking babies’ DNA to enable her clients to reverse the aging process. When Mia goes to investigate, she finds herself trapped, branded and tortured in a grim underground facility. Familiar faces start to appear, and she realises that she is not alone in this…

Breeder gets off to a very strange start. We’re introduce to Mia as she’s rejected in bed by her husband, later heading out to the horse stable to masturbate whilst sitting on the spikes of a spur! This is definitely a marriage in decline. And it’s no wonder… Mia’s husband is part an parcel to the kidnapping of women,...

Stars: Sara Hjort Ditlevsen, Anders Heinrichsen, Morten Holst, Signe Egholm Olsen, Eeva Putro, Jens Andersen, David Bateson | Written by Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen | Directed by Jens Dahl

A renowned health supplement company, run by a ruthless businesswoman, is selecting and abducting young women as part of an experiment bio-hacking babies’ DNA to enable her clients to reverse the aging process. When Mia goes to investigate, she finds herself trapped, branded and tortured in a grim underground facility. Familiar faces start to appear, and she realises that she is not alone in this…

Breeder gets off to a very strange start. We’re introduce to Mia as she’s rejected in bed by her husband, later heading out to the horse stable to masturbate whilst sitting on the spikes of a spur! This is definitely a marriage in decline. And it’s no wonder… Mia’s husband is part an parcel to the kidnapping of women,...

Exclusive: Breeder, the Danish horror movie, has sold to territories around the world for Scandi sales outfit LevelK.

Directed by Jens Dahl, whose credits include co-writing Nicolas Winding-Refn’s Pusher, the movie tells the story of a renowned health supplement company, run by a ruthless businesswoman, which is selecting and abducting young women as part of an experiment bio-hacking babies’ DNA to enable her clients to reverse the ageing process. When Mia goes to investigate, she finds herself trapped, branded and tortured in a grim underground facility.

Despite not having its world premiere yet due to the pandemic, sales interest has been strong, and we can reveal that the following territory deals have been inked: Germany (Tiberius), UK (Eureka Entertainment), Japan (New Select), Russia Cis (Russian World Vision), Italy (30 Holding), Taiwan (Av-jet), Portugal (Films4you), the Baltics (Best film), South East Asia, Indian Sub-Continent (Paragon Films).

The screenplay was written...

Projects about biohacking, werewolves, Kung-Fu and even killer fingernails and the menopause are among those being presented at this week’sFrontières Platform Cannes for genre films.

A co-presentation between the Cannes Film Market and Canada’s Fantasia International Film Festival, this year’s Frontières selection is also notable for featuring a large number of genre projects by female filmmakers and centered on female characters. The projects also come from as far afield as Argentina, Israel and Russia, well as the U.S., U.K. and Canada.

Taking place online on June 25, the 4th Frontières has two distinct strands. The Buyers Showcase will present six projects that have recently been completed or are in post-production, and screens footage for buyers, sales agents and festival programmers. The Proof of Concept Presentation, meanwhile, will screen teaser trailers for seven projects looking for financing partners.

Surveying the 13 projects, newly appointed Frontières executive director Annick Mahnert...

The Danish firm will be selling a highly varied selection, ranging from genre films to biopic dramas and documentaries from various countries. Danish sales agent LevelK is ready for the upcoming Cannes Marché du Film, which this year is unspooling digitally from 22-26 June, and the company is bringing a total of six films from various countries to be screened at the virtual market. The Danish horror flick Breeder by Jens Dahl (3 Things) follows Mia, who, while researching a health-supplement company, discovers that biohacking experiments are being performed. When she digs further, she is trapped and tortured. Written by Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen (The Return) and produced by Amalie Lyngbo Quist and Maria Møller Christoffersen (Koko-di Koko-da) for Beo Starling, the film is also featured in the Frontières Platform’s Buyers Showcase slate this year (see the news). Currently in post-production, the Finnish biopic Tove by Zaida Bergroth (Miami,...

The upcoming production will be presented as part of the Cannes Marche’s Frontieres Proof of Concept Presentation.

LevelK has acquired world sales rights for the forthcoming Danish horror Breeder, and will start selling the film in Cannes.

The upcoming production will be presented as part of the Cannes Marche’s Frontieres Proof of Concept Presentation (18 May at 10 am in Palais K).

Production will start in September 2019 and the film is set for an autumn 2020 release locally by Blockbuster and LevelK.

Jens Dahl, who wrote and directed 3 Things (2017) and co-wrote Nicolas Winding-Refn’s Pusher (1996), will direct.

The story is about an experiment involving biohacking,...

“All children are beautiful when they’re loved.”

During the last years, an increasing number of films, fiction and non-fiction, deal with the issue of dislocation. Whether we are talking about works such as Maren Wickwire’s “Together Apart” or Kaori Oda’s magnificent “Toward a Common Tenderness”, issues like identity and home have become more and more important in the global village. Considering economy and culture have become globalized, the development should not come as a surprise, its spiritual repercussions, however, will have a long afterlife. And many artists sense the topic as one we need to talk about and deal with more sensitively.

The Return is screening at London Korean Film Festival

Regarding these issues, Malene Choi Jensen feature debut “The Return” marks another interesting perspective to the topic, one which is deeply personal to the Danish director. Born in Korea, she was given away for adoption after birth and “The Return” is,...

The Damned producers Emilie Jouffroy and Kamilla Hodol are recipients of a BFI Vision Award this year.

Seven genre features were pitched as part of the Nordic Genre Boost at Haugesund’s New Nordic Films market on Wednesday.

Highlights include prolific Icelandic director’s character-driven sci-fi East By Eleven; and The Damned, a Norwegian-uk-Iceland co-production that will be directed by Iceland-born, UK-based director Thordur Palsson and produced by Emilie Jouffroy and Kamilla Hodol of London’s Elation Pictures, which has just received a BFI Vision Award announced today.

This is the third round of the development initiative Nordic Genre Boost launched by Nordisk Film & TV Fond in December 2014. The Boost gives each project a grant of $18,500 (Nok 200,000) as well as offering two residential workshops and mentoring.

“The aim of this initiative is to encourage and support Nordic genre films, giving the selected projects a platform on which to strengthen their visibility and potential to reach the production...