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Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle is now showing on Mubi in many countries.The Girl with the Needle.Let us begin with a bedtime story, the kind that troubles dreams: One day a demon manufactures a mirror that magnifies negatives, making flaws and deceptions more visible than ever. Within its frame, people look “hideous” and “so distorted that no one could recognize them,” yet they eagerly convey the “cunning invention” everywhere to expose “for the first time … what the world and mankind were really like.” Soon, some heave the mirror skyward, hoping to unhallow the angels. But it plummets to the ground and shatters, flinging shrapnel across the surface of the earth. Each small shard shares the power of the whole, a force that distorts victims and their views. All this is merely prologue. The rest of “The Snow Queen,” by Hans Christian Andersen, follows two...

Running influencer Kate Mackz has faced intense backlash for her new video with Trump‘s press secretary Karoline Leavitt and now Tim Walz‘s daughter Hope Walz is slamming her too.

Kate is known for her videos where she interviews famous people while jogging, with recent videos including Patrick Schwarzenegger and Julianne Hough. Back in October, she released a video with Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz just weeks before the election.

This week, Kate dropped a video that she filmed at the White House with Karoline and there’s no running involved in the video at all.

Kate‘s fans have been disappointed at her for giving a platform to the Trump administration to normalize the way they’re running the country. All the while, Kate has still kept her Tim Walz video as her top-pinned video.

Hope slammed her for this.

Keep reading to find out more…

“Running as an act is political,...

In one of the highest profile deals announced at Series Mania, European TV giant Beta Film has boarded crime series “Cecilie Mars,” created and helmed by Christoffer Boe, rated one of Denmark’s best directors, and produced by Karoline Leth for double Oscar winner Zentropa Entertainments(“In a Better World,” “Another Drink”).

Beta Film has secured international distribution rights to the series which will be presented by Boe and Leth at Series Mania’s Co-Pro Pitching Sessions on March 25 in Lille’s Grand Palais Grand Théâtre, its biggest screening venue which is still habitually packed for the Sessions.

“Cecilie Mars” rates as one of the Sessions’ biggest 2025 buzz titles. Described by Beta Film as a “fresh and twisted take on the thriller genre,” the six-part series turns on Cecilie Mars, a driven and model new police commissioner who is secretly consumed by a past trauma. When a case hits too...

Denmark may have had statistically low murder rates, especially when compared to most countries around the world. But the Nordic country remains notorious for some of its high-profile true-crime murder cases from the 1950s Copenhagen hypnosis murders, which was made into a movie titled Murderous Trance a.k.a. The Guardian Angel starring Pilou Asbæk in 2018 to the murder of Kim Wall in 2017, which became a 2022 Netflix documentary film Into the Deep: The Submarine Murder Case.

Then, there’s the Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye, who murdered between 9 and 25 children from 1913 to 1920 before she was eventually arrested and initially sentenced to death before being commuted to life imprisonment. This unspeakable true story becomes a source of inspiration for director Magnum von Horn in The Girl with the Needle.

But instead of diving straight to the grisly subject matter told from Dagmar’s point of view, von Horn, who also co-wrote...

The Danish film “The Girl with the Needle” is gaining momentum in this year’s Oscar race, drawing attention to critical issues of reproductive rights and social inequality. Nominated for Best International Feature Film, the period drama offers a powerful exploration of women’s struggles in the early 20th century that resonates strongly with current political debates.

Directed by Magnus Von Horn, the film follows Karoline, a young woman navigating complex social challenges after experiencing a failed abortion. Lead actress Vic Carmen Sonne sees the film as a timely commentary on ongoing reproductive rights battles. “Since Trump’s inauguration, it’s been hard to keep up with political changes,” Sonne said. “The abortion bans in several states are devastating.”

The film’s production in Poland added depth to its narrative, according to veteran actress Trine Dyrholm. “When we shot the film, the abortion restrictions in Poland made the story feel immediately relevant,...

“The Girl with the Needle” stars Trine Dyrholm and Vic Carmen Sonne are slowly readying for the Oscar campaign. But following the U.S. election, the film – set in the early 20th century and dealing with unwanted pregnancies – feels increasingly timely, they say.

“Since Trump’s inauguration at the White House it has been hard to keep up with what’s going on and with what all of this is going to mean. Same goes for the abortion ban. We know what has already happened in several states, and it’s devastating. But it’s almost like people want to acknowledge these themes the film is revolving around. And that’s a positive sign,” argues Vic Carmen Sonne at Göteborg.

The Danish actor plays Karoline: a young woman who, following a failed abortion, begins working at an ‘adoption agency.’ But its mastermind Dagmar (Dyrholm), always eager to help those...

The distorted, grotesque close-ups in the first few seconds of Magnus von Horn’s The Girl With The Needle have the quality to captivate you immediately. This is not another ‘based on true events’ film that obsesses over details and replication; instead, the focus is on visual language and social commentary. The Girl With The Needle is one of those films that lingers long after the end credits, and Vic Carmen Sonne’s portrayal of Karoline was hauntingly brilliant. It had been months since Karoline had last heard from her husband. She was a worker at a clothing factory, and her single income was not enough to afford the apartment she stayed at. Karoline begged her landlord to give her a few more days to pay back the money she owed, but he was done with her excuses and already had another tenant ready to move in. He helped her...

“The Girl with the Needle” opens with a haunting tableau of women from various walks of life, their stories intertwining through a common undercurrent of desolation and self-destruction. A chilling atmosphere permeates, shattering the screen with a silent impact. Who knew the introduction was an early sign of the intense darkness the film contains, hidden deeper in its vault? Karoline faces major financial problems and can’t afford to pay her rent. The post-World War I period has subjected the nation to misery, whereby joy and happiness seem to be absent from every walk of life.

She eventually leaves the house and moves into a disorderly, wrecked mansion, where she lives in an overcharged room with no proper facilities (a bucket serves as a “toilet”). She then falls in love (mutually) with the young owner of the company she works for and gets dumped by his family upon announcing her pregnancy.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Blink Twice (Zoë Kravitz)

Over a close-up of a turtle, ominous sound design builds at such a deep frequency that the walls of a press-screening room in Beverly Hills began rattling. Once the shaking stopped and it’s realized this was not the third Los Angeles earthquake in as many weeks, the setup of Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut Blink Twice is doled out in impressively economical fashion: Rent is due for Frida (Naomie Ackie) and Jess (Alia Shawkat). Rather than pay up and keep the wheels spinning in their going-nowhere-fast lives, Frida has a plan: retrieving a hidden wad of bills, she purchases gowns so she and Jess can crash a fancy gala after their waitress shifts end. Looking suitably glamorous,...

Swedish filmmaker Magnus von Horn finds himself in some rarefied, multi-cultural air this awards season, appearing on both the International Oscar shortlist and the BAFTA longlist in the comparable category for his first Danish-language feature, The Girl with the Needle.

Von Horn’s Swedish-produced debut, The Here After, premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight in 2015, while his second feature film, the Polish-produced Sweat, was part of the official program of the Covid-canceled Cannes in 2020.

The filmmaker currently resides in Poland and has dual citizenship with Sweden, so what drew his interest in pivoting to a Danish movie? In the Q&a below, he explains it was the story itself that touched upon his own inner fears.

Starring Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm, The Girl with the Needle is inspired by one of Denmark’s most notorious murder cases. It follows Karoline (Sonne), a young factory worker struggling to survive in post-wwi Copenhagen.

The Göteborg Film Festival, Sweden’s leading film fest, has unveiled its 2025 lineup, which features several award season contenders, including Brady Corbet’s Golden Globe winner The Brutalist, Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle, and Luca Guadagnino’s Queer.

The Brutalist picked up three Golden Globes this Sunday, including for best picture, drama, best director for Corbet and best actor, drama for star Brody. In the historical epic, Brody plays László Tóth, a Jewish architect who arrives in America from Budapest after surviving World War II. The film co-stars Felicity Jones as László’s wife and Guy Pearce as billionaire Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.

Daniel Craig scored a best actor, drama nomination at the Globes for his starring role in Queer as William Lee, based on William S. Burroughs’ alter ego, following his journey through Mexico and South America with Drew Starkey as Gene. The Girl with the Needle,...

Inspiring or irritating, empowering or exploitative, maternal or manipulative — with many shades of gray in between — female mentorship is a common dynamic in many of 2024’s most affecting stories.

In films as diverse as “All We Imagine as Light,” “Babygirl,” “Emilia Pérez,” “The Girl With the Needle,” “Inside Out 2” “The Last Showgirl,” “My Old Ass” and “The Substance,” women develop relationships with one another that alternately risk harm as much as they mean to be helpful, forge camaraderie out of competition or simply provide a mirror reflecting — frequently uncomfortably — who they once were or may one day become.

Inspired by its writer-director’s curiosity about multi-generational friendship, Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light” tells the stories of three nurses — Prabha (Kani Kusruti), Anu (Divya Prabha) and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) — navigating the sociopolitical complexities of Mumbai. “When there is a lot of difference in the generations, there is a sort of conflict that,...

Opening in the U.S. to critical acclaim on December 6, Magnus von Horn’s The Girl with the Needle can't exactly be categorized as a horror movie. However, that doesn’t mean that the black-and-white drama about two disenfranchised women crossing paths in 1920s Denmark doesn’t have a tinge of horror to it. The story of Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), who takes a job assisting Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), the owner of a clandestine adoption agency that purports to help poor, unmarried mothers find homes for their children, is a true crime drama. And, as is often the case with such tales, the reality can sometimes be just as horrifying, or even more so, than the fiction it inspires.

At first, we assume that the titular needle in director Magnus von Horn’s bleak, disturbing and altogether mesmerizing The Girl with the Needle is the one that near-penniless Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) uses to stitch soldier’s uniforms at the World War I-era Copenhagen factory where she works. Soon, another needle is introduced. It is much larger and Karoline will use it for the most desperate of purposes — to give herself an abortion. The Girl with the Needle is the kind of film where degradations continually pile upon Karoline like dirt shoveled atop a grave. The rare sliver of hope gets blotted out by the filth and soot of a world indifferent to her struggles.

In less assured hands, Karoline’s journey through the muck of early 20th century chauvinism would be either a leaden pre-feminist parable or a show-off attempt at elevated horror. But von Horn has something...

In the world of Danish true crime, one name looms large over all the rest: Dagmar Overbye. Between 1913 and 1920, Overbye operated a fraudulent adoption agency that claimed to find homes for babies without parents able to care for them — but she secretly killed the children that were placed in her care. She was estimated to have murdered between 9 and 25 infants and was sentenced to death in a high profile murder trial in 1921.

As the country’s first female serial killer, Overbye is now a household name in Denmark. But director Magnus von Horn and screenwriter Line Langebek Knudsen believed that the public hadn’t looked past the salacious headlines and engaged with the substance of Overbye’s life. That led them to make “The Girl with the Needle,” Denmark’s official Oscar submission that offers a fictionalized retelling of a true story that hasn’t lost an iota of topicality.

There’s something achingly heartwrenching yet horrifying about The Girl With The Needle. The Danish film, directed by Magnus von Horn from a screenplay co-written with Line Langebek, opens with the face of a woman changing — stretching, morphing — into multiple others. It’s an ominous beginning that puts us on edge and prepares us for what’s to come. In some ways, the film is a horror; in others, it’s a true-crime story. At the heart of the movie are flawed, desperate women who are simply seeking to control the world around them when they know how limited their options truly are.

The Girl With The Needle, directed by Magnus von Horn, follows Karoline, a young factory worker in post-wwi Copenhagen, as she navigates abandonment and pregnancy. She encounters Dagmar, who operates a clandestine adoption agency within a candy store, offering aid to impoverished mothers seeking foster homes for their children.

As 2024 comes to a close, much of the month will be dedicated to wrapping up the year in cinema with a plethora of year-end features (bookmark here for those), but let’s take a deeper look at the December line-up. Featuring some of the most-praised films of the year, including my favorite shortest and longest works, and much more, it’s a great time for holiday movie-going.

We should note also that a number of notable films are getting Oscar-qualifying runs before the end of the year, which we’ll feature on this in proper when they get their official releases.

15. A Complete Unknown (James Mangold; Dec. 25)

Nabbing the last spot on this for sheer fascination with Bob Dylan alone and not much else, James Mangold in biopic mode is often far less interesting than some of his other work. However, with what seems to be a committed Timothée Chalamet...

In ways both literal and figurative, the face plays a central role in The Girl with the Needle, Magnus von Horn’s unsparing black-and-white drama about a woman whose life spirals from bad to worse after an unexpected pregnancy. What does a face show and hide? Is there even such a thing as a trustworthy face? The film opens with a tone-setting montage of disfigured faces that portends the societal decay of post-World War I Copenhagen—a rot that becomes apparent in the story as it increasingly infects a young woman facing motherhood.

The film proper begins on Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), who believes that her husband died in the war, being evicted from her flat by her landlord (Per Thiim Thim) because of overdue rent. Things would seem to take a turn for the better for the woman when she becomes pregnant by Jørgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), the well-to-do owner...

When Polish cinematographer Michal Dymek first read the script for “The Girl With the Needle” – the winner of this year’s Camerimage main prize – he says he could instantly see the scenes in his mind: stark, shadowy images of a decrepit Danish slum, where sweatshop workers during World War I bend over creaking machinery.

He saw classical onscreen shot compositions framing crumbling, claustrophobic spaces where desperate people are ensnared.

“It was amazing, strong – like the best script I ever read,” says Dymek. He knew instantly that the film had to be in black and white, he says. “I wanted to create a time machine. All we know of that time is from black and white photographs so we had to film that.”

Over the two years of prep time, as the production grew into a Danish-Swedish-Polish project, says Dymek, Leica Hugo lenses were decided on to help create the distortions...

Looking outside America this Oscar season, there are plenty of candidates for the Best International Feature award. You might gravitate to Latvia’s Cannes entry Flow, a dialogue-free animation in which a black cat, a bird and a ragtag band of other creatures fight for survival in a human-free world after a catastrophic flood. Or maybe you’ll fancy the chances of raucous Irish-language Sundance comedy Kneecap, a wildly stylized biopic of the English-baiting, all-male hip-hop trio from Belfast.

But these two are outliers; the international Oscar race this year is dominated by stories of women, from all over the world. For example, the U.K.’s Hindi-language drama Santosh, filmed in Uttar Pradesh, Northern India, finds a policeman’s widow thrown into her late husband’s world, where she must battle police indifference and solve the murder of a low-caste local girl. From Bulgaria there is Triumph, a political...

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Karoline Leavitt as White House press secretary.

Leavitt was the national press secretary during Trump’s recent campaign, and served as assistant press secretary in the first term.

At age 27, Leavitt will be the youngest White House press secretary in history.

Trump said in a statement, “Karoline Leavitt did a phenomenal job as the National Press Secretary on my Historic Campaign, and I am pleased to announce she will serve as White House Press Secretary. Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator. I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium, and help deliver our message to the American People as we, Make America Great Again.”

The role is especially scrutinized under Trump, who went through four press secretaries in his first term: Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany.

Related : Rfk Jr...

The trailer for The Girl with the Needle has been revealed. Set in Copenhagen in 1919, The Girl with the Needle tells the story of a young woman who is faced with pregnancy and unemployment. She meets a person who runs an underground adoption agency, but in this effort discovers a darker truth behind the work being done. The film is directed by Magnus von Horn and features a leading cast including Vic Carmen Sonne, Trine Dyrholm, Besir Zeciri, Ava Knox Martin, Joachim Fjelstrup, Tessa Hoder, and Ari Alexander.

Now, Mubi has release the trailer for The Girl with the Needle. Shot in black-and-white, the trailer opens by showing a woman leaving work and then standing alone in an alleyway. She is denied her "widow supplement" because she cannot present her husband's death certificate. The husband, who wears a strange mask, is then revealed, and the lead, Karoline, asks "Where have you been?...

Inspired by a true story, The Girl with the Needle draws from one of the most heinous murder cases in Danish history. Mubi has unveiled an official trailer that introduces the grim tale, told in stunning Gothic style.

The Girl with the Needle releases in theaters on December 6, 2024.

The film “follows Karoline, a young factory worker, as she is struggling to survive in post WW1 Copenhagen. When she finds herself unemployed, abandoned and pregnant, she meets Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), a charismatic woman running an underground adoption agency, helping mothers to find foster homes for their unwanted children. With nowhere else to turn, Karoline takes on the role of a wet nurse. A strong connection is formed between the two women, but Karoline’s world shatters when she stumbles upon the shocking truth behind her work.”

Magnus von Horn directs The Girl with the Needle from a script he co-wrote with Line Langebeck.

After making a splash with his influencer satire Sweat, Swedish director Magnus von Horn returned to Cannes Film Festival earlier this year with the black-and-white drama The Girl with the Needle. Picked up by Mubi for a release on December 6, the first trailer has now arrived for Denmark’s Oscar entry.

Here’s the synopsis: “Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), a young factory worker, is struggling to survive in post WW1 Copenhagen. When she finds herself unemployed, abandoned and pregnant, she meets Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), a charismatic woman running an underground adoption agency, helping mothers to find foster homes for their unwanted children. With nowhere else to turn, Karoline takes on the role of a wet-nurse. A strong connection is formed between the two women, but Karoline’s world shatters when she stumbles upon the shocking truth behind her work. Inspired by a true story and directed by Magnus von Horn...

Now that's how you do a trailer! Today's first look at The Girl With The Needle, the official Danish entry for Best International Feature at the Academy Awards, gives absolutely nothing away but still manages to be bleak and weird and completely intriguing. The main character, Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) might have killed her husband.

Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez are among the winners of the European Film Academy’s 2024 Excellence Awards, celebrating arts and crafts achievements in eight categories.

The winners, which are decided by a specialist eight-member jury, will receive their trophies at the European Film Awards ceremony in the Swiss city of Lucerne on December 7.

The UK’s Benjamin Kračun won best European Cinematography for his work on The Substance with the jury praising the way he captured the demise of protagonist Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore).

“He playfully explores her physical and psychological demise with highly stylised lens distortions and manipulations. It is loud and glossy, but also manages to eke out an unexpected intimacy and vulnerability,” read the jury comments.

|The audience is transported through to an unbearably painful, and hilariously raucous ending, achieved only through collaboration with all departments and is undoubtably a celebration of cinematography and cinema.

The Seville European Film Festival kicks off tonight in the Andalusian capital city. So, we’ve scoured this year’s program to pick ten titles that show off the selection’s breadth and quality.

“The Girl With the Needle” Magnus von Horn (Denmark)

Denmark’s submission to the International Feature race unspools in the years after World War II and follows Karoline, an out-of-work young pregnant woman who meets Dagmar, a woman who runs a clandestine adoption agency. Karoline works as a wet nurse for the agency before learning the shocking truth about the organization. An “extraordinary and upsetting film,” according to its glowing Variety review.

“Flow” Gints Zilbalodis (Latvia)

One of the year’s best-received animated features and Latvia’s Oscars submission, “Flow” heads to Seville as one of the strongest indie contenders for an animated feature nomination. In the wordless film, a small group of animals on a...

Denmark has chosen “The Girl With the Needle” to represent the country in the Best International Feature Film category at the upcoming Academy Awards. The film tells the difficult story of illegal abortions in Copenhagen during the early 1900s.

Directed by Magnus von Horn, “The Girl With the Needle” follows seamstress Karoline after she becomes pregnant by her wealthy partner. When he abandons her, Karoline must decide between trying a self-induced abortion or an unsafe back-alley adoption. The movie explores this controversial topic through her harrowing journey.

Starring rising actor Vic Carmen Sonne as Karoline, the film has already received critical acclaim on the international film festival circuit. It premiered at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival and later screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. Reviews praised von Horn’s direction and the unflinching portrayal of the challenges facing women without options.

The Hollywood Reporter called it a “dark, urgently...

Denmark has selected Magnus von Horn’s The Girl With the Needle as its Oscar submission for the Best International Feature Film category.

Starring Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm, The Girl With the Needle riffs on one of Denmark’s most notorious murder cases to weave a poetic and dark fairytale about the people living on the margins in the aftermath of the First World War. Deadline’s review called the film “an unequivocal and beguiling triumph.”

Karoline (Sonne), a young factory worker, is struggling to survive in post World War I Copenhagen. When she finds herself unemployed, abandoned and pregnant, she meets Dagmar (Dyrholm), a charismatic woman running an underground adoption agency, helping mothers to find foster homes for their unwanted children. With nowhere else to turn, Karoline takes on the role of a wet-nurse. A strong connection is formed between the two women, but Karoline’s world...

The Girl with the Needle draws from one of the most heinous murder cases in Danish history, yet director Magnus von Horn isn’t interested in retreading a familiar serial killer biopic ground. Telling a story inspired by Dagmar Overby presents fertile ground for horror, but Dagmar’s chosen victims were children and babies, making for murkier territory to traverse. Instead, von Horn smartly navigates the treacherous pitfalls of this serial killer tale with thoughtful empathy, framing the story from a broader perspective for a timely, gothic tale of hardship for society’s forgotten and discarded.

Vic Carmen Sonne as Karoline, a young seamstress working in a Copenhagen factory, struggles to survive after her husband was declared missing in action during WWI. No recovered body means she’s without any supplemental support from the government, and her single income isn’t enough to keep the rent paid. Even when her boss,...

The Legacies finale disappointed fans by not giving Klaus and Caroline the epic reunion they deserved after years of chemistry and potential romance. Throughout The Originals and The Vampire Diaries, Klaus and Caroline's relationship evolved, showing moments of connection, chemistry, and growth. Despite their ups and downs, Klaus and Caroline's interactions showcased both characters' vulnerabilities and strengths, highlighting their complex and compelling dynamic.

The Legacies series finale featured two much-anticipated cameos, as Klaus Mikaelson and Caroline Forbes made an appearance in the show for the very first time, reminding the audience of all the great Klaus and Caroline episodes of the franchise. Even though they were never officially together, the two of them had a lot of chemistry, and a big part of The Vampire Diaries fandom was rooting for them to the very end. So it was almost cruel that the finale didn't give Klaus and Caroline the epic reunion fans wanted.

One of the first nominees for the Palme d’or that was presented this year at the Cannes International Film Festival was The Girl with the Needle (Pigen med nålen), a great Danish drama, shot in black and white, set at the end of the First World War and in the post-conflict period. The protagonist is Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne), a young woman whom we meet while her landlord evicts her for nonpayment. Evidently her situation is precarious, in addition to the fact that she has no news about her husband from the front, nor a certificate of his death that could allow her to collect a subsidy. She works in a sewing factory and eventually begins a relationship with the owner (Joachim Fjelstrup), who knows...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Mubi has swooped on its third 2024 Cannes competition title, Variety has learned.

Having acquired worldwide rights to Coralie Fargeat’s buzzy body horror “The Substance” and U.K. rights to Andrea Arnold’s Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski-starring ‘Bird’ before the festival began, the arthouse distributor, production banner and streamer has now picked up Magnus von Horn’s chilling black and white drama “The Girl With the Needle.” Mubi bought the title for North America, U.K./Ireland, Latin America, Germany/Austria, Italy, Turkey and India.

Directed by von Horn (“Sweat”) from a screenplay he wrote with Line Langebek, “The Girl With the Needle” is loosely based on the true story of Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye, who helped impoverished women kill their unwanted children and was first sentenced to death in 1921, but it was later changed into a lifetime in prison.

In von Horn’s pic, set in post WW1 Copenhagen,...

Almost a decade since his debut feature The Here After premiered at Directors’ Fortnight, Swedish director Magnus von Horn is finally in Cannes Competition with the black-and-white period film The Girl with the Needle. Previously there was Sweat––the Polish-language jab at influencer culture––but when the festival was canceled on account of the pandemic, it got a “Cannes Selection” stamp rather than “Competition.” A silver lining that The Girl with the Needle is perhaps best-suited for a Palme d’Or head-to-head: it is surprising, stylish, and unabashedly brave.

Von Horn certainly knows what to aim for when bringing in two of the most exciting names in Scandinavian cinema today, Vic Carmen Sonne (Holiday) and Trine Dyrholm. Sonne plays Karoline, a factory seamstress who finds herself in a pickle; Dyrholm is Dagmar, the mysterious woman who offers help. While Karoline is undoubtedly the protagonist––and the titular girl with the needle,...

Like one of those fiendish knots that tighten the more you squirm, director Magnus von Horn’s Cannes competitor The Girl With the Needle builds to a devastating climax, taut as piano wire.

Danish actress Vic Carmen Sonne (Holiday, Godland) offers an understated but multi-layered performance as Karoline, a vulnerable but resilient seamstress living in post-World War I/early-1920s Copenhagen, who is left high and dry when her wealthy lover (Joachim Fjelstrup) gets her knocked up but won’t marry her. That leaves Karoline with only two options: give herself a bathtub abortion with a knitting needle or have the baby and hand it over to Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm), a sinister candy-store owner who runs a backstreet adoption agency.

Shot digitally, in black and white and using a claustrophobic 3:2 ratio by rising cinematographer Michal Dymek (A Real Pain, Eo), the film has the haunted, eerily still poise of antique photographs,...

There is a rug-pull moment in Magnus von Horn’s handsome and captivating period yarn that cleaves his drama into “before” and “after.” It is a testament to the rich and assured storytelling on offer in his Cannes competition entry “The Girl with the Needle” that, although the moment seems to come out of nowhere, it instantly makes sense and serves to ratchet up the tension, propelling the story’s evergreen themes into a confrontational new register.

In post-World War I Copenhagen, we drop in with Karoline (Vic Carmen Sonne) as she is being evicted from a pleasant room in a respectable part of town. With her soldier husband Mia, her factory worker wages don’t cover the rent and she has fallen into arrears. The rapacious need of this time is telegraphed as mere minutes after Karoline receives her marching orders, the woman replacing her arrives to look over the room.

In a pre-feminist age, Karoline is what entirely too many people would call a “fallen woman.” Alone, unemployed and pregnant by a man not her husband, she is acknowledged only to be punished, and invisible for all remaining purposes. Women like Karoline don’t fall of their own accord. They’re dropped, often from a great height, by a ruling patriarchy that doesn’t even care to watch them splatter. That involuntary descent, to not just a grimy gutter but a near-Hadean underworld of human cruelty, is the chief horror in “The Girl With the Needle,” Magnus von Horn’s extraordinary and upsetting film — an adult fairytale abundantly populated with witches and wretches, but where society is revealed as the true monster.

Von Horn’s previous feature “Sweat,” a selection for the scrapped 2020 edition of the Cannes Film Festival, offered a very different study of femininity bending over backwards to meet societal standards.

Magnus von Horn’s sophomore feature Sweat earned its director a spot in Cannes’ Official Selection in 2020, after his debut, The Here After, played in Directors’ Fortnight in 2015. But the festival of 2020 was canceled in the wake of the Covid pandemic, so von Horn’s place in this year’s Competition, with his third feature The Girl With the Needle, must surely mark the Swedish director’s coming-of-age. The film, starring Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm, riffs on one of Denmark’s most notorious murder cases to weave a poetic and dark fairytale about the people living on the margins in the aftermath of the First World War.

Dyrholm stars as Dagmar Overbye, the Danish serial killer convicted of murdering nine children — but suspected of many more deaths — between 1913 and 1920. One was her own; the others were handed to her by struggling mothers with babies born out of wedlock,...

In the past decade, Swedish-Polish filmmaker Magnus von Horn has become something of a fixture on the French Riviera, with his latest film, “The Girl With the Needle,” the director’s third feature to debut at the Cannes Film Festival and his first to compete for the Palme d’Or.

But the dark historical drama, which is set in post-wwi Copenhagen, marks a departure for the 40-year-old. Von Horn’s previous features — the 2015 Directors’ Fortnight breakout “The Here After” and his 2020 Cannes selection “Sweat” — are stories of loneliness and isolation spun from the fabric of contemporary life. The director’s first foray into period drama, “The Girl With the Needle” uses the past to tell a very modern story that centers on class, choice and the politics of women’s bodies.

Written by von Horn and Line Langebek (“I’ll Come Running”), the film is loosely based on the real-life...

In 2020, Magnus von Horn was excited to find that his film Sweat had been accepted into the Official Selection at Cannes, a big step up from his debut, The Here After, which made Directors’ Fortnight in 2015. The pandemic put an end to that, but his disappointment was short-lived; this year, his dark atmospheric follow-up, The Girl With the Needle, sees him joining the big league. “This is huge to me,” he beams. “The main competition!”

Magnus von Horn

Set in Denmark during World War I, the film stars Vic Carmen Sonne as Karoline, a young seamstress whose soldier husband is missing in action. Through a series of mishaps, Karoline falls pregnant, loses her job, and meets a mysterious woman named Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm) who runs both a candy store and an adoption agency.

Now based in Poland, where he graduated from Łódź Film School in 2013, Von Horn has always pursued a career in film.

Swedish-Polish director Magnus von Horn’s dark period drama “The Girl With the Needle” will compete for the Palme d’Or at the 77th Cannes Film Festival. Variety has been given exclusive access to a first-look clip from the film.

Written by von Horn and Line Langebek (“I’ll Come Running”), “The Girl With the Needle” is loosely based on the true story of Dagmar Overbye, a Danish woman who established an underground adoption agency in post-World War I Copenhagen to help poor women dealing with unwanted pregnancies.

Starring Trine Dyrholm, Vic Carmen Sonne and Besir Zeciri (“Wildland”), the film follows Karoline (Sonne), a young factory worker who is struggling to survive on the fringes of society. When she finds herself unemployed, abandoned and pregnant, she meets Dagmar (Dyrholm), a charismatic shopkeeper who helps poor mothers to find foster homes for their unwanted children.

With nowhere else to turn, Karoline...

Cologne-based The Match Factory has acquired rights to Swedish-Polish helmer Magnus von Horn’s Danish pic “The Girl With the Needle,” billed as a “fairy-tale about a horrible truth.” In the starring roles are Trine Dyrholm, Vic Carmen Sonne and Besir Zeciri (“Wildland”).

First clips of the stylised black-and-white chiller will be unveiled at the Works in Progress at Göteborg’s Nordic Film Market.

“Magnus von Horn is a talent to follow,” said The Match Factory’s head of sales Thania Dimitrakopoulou. “His story of “The Girl with the Needle” hooked us and his choice of cast and narrative style promises a great outcome. We are certain the audiences will relate to this.”

Von Horn’s dark drama is his first foray into period genre, following his 2015 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight calling card “The Here After”, and his 2020 Cannes-selected and international festival hit “Sweat”, a “poised, impressive drama” according to Variety.

Superposition Photo: courtesy of Frightfest

A standout selection at Halloween Frightfest, Karoline Lyngbye’s Superposition takes a disconcerting science fiction premise and teases it out into a disturbing – and sometimes very funny – psychological drama. There are elements of horror, too, as city couple Stine (Marie Bach Hansen) and Teit (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) head out into the woods on a journalistic mission to find themselves and end up getting much more than they bargained for. On the opposite side of the lake from their little house, they see another couple who seem to resemble them in every way.

It seems very ambitious for a first feature project, I told Karoline when I met her just before the festival.

“Yeah, I guess it is. It's the way the idea shaped itself, so that was just how it went. We did develop it within a call for fairly low budget films. The low budget part is,...

From, Karoline Xu, the scriptwriter's statement: From 1998 to 2000, I lived in a municipality next to Stockholm. I loved everything there: underground grocery stores, recess in the woods, dressing up for St. Lucia's Day. Later, my mom told me that I had a difficult time. The school where I kissed my first crush (a young Norwegian boy) was the same place where other white boys mocked my small “Oriental” eyes. In 2014, Sweden re-released the 1969 Pippi Longstocking television series and removed a few racial slurs, including the phrase “king of the Negroes” and a sequence where Pippi draws her eyes out into the slant eye gesture and sings a mock Chinese song. There was a large backlash; many Swedes believed this censorship corrupted a national treasure and reflected a submission to the “politically correct” atmosphere. The fusion of these events spurred what would eventually become “Pippi”

“Pippi” is screening at New Filmmakers...

Warning: Spoilers for Succession season 4, episode 3Brian Cox confirms that Logan Roy will return in Succession season 4. Since the beginning of HBO's Emmy-winning drama, Succession has chronicled the media tycoon's declining health (portrayed brilliantly by Brian Cox) from his hemorrhagic stroke in the very first episode to his acute psychosis caused by a Uti during season 3. However, Succession season 4, episode 3 still managed to shock audiences by abruptly killing off Logan on a plane to Sweden, while his kids are on a yacht for Connor's wedding.

Shortly after episode 3 aired, Cox teased Logan's future in Succession season 4 in an interview with Vulture. Though Logan's death is definitive, audiences haven't seen the last of the Roy family patriarch, as Cox confirms he returned to production to shoot flashback scenes featuring his character. Read his full comment below:

I do pop back and I have a couple scenes later on, which is flashback stuff.

Exclusive: Career Opportunities in Murder and Mayhem, the Hulu series in the works that stars Mandy Patinkin, has put the finishing touches on its already starry ensemble by adding Linda Emond (The Gilded Age) and Jayne Atkinson (House of Cards) in heavily recurring roles.

Emond will play Agent Hilde Eriksen, a shrewd, bureaucratic Interpol agent who comes on board the SS Varuna to investigate after a murder takes place. She’s repped by CAA. Atkinson will play Katherine Collier, the whip smart mother of Anna (Lauren Patten) and wife to the powerful tycoon Lawrence Collier (David Marshall Grant). She’s repped by Industry Entertainment.

The project written by Stumptown duo Mike Weiss and Heidi Cole McAdams and directed by Marc Webb asks the question how do you solve a murder in a post-fact world, especially when sailing the Mediterranean on an ocean liner filled with the wealthy and powerful? Everyone on board is hiding something,...

"Love should come with a warning label: love can kill you." Love can be quite dangerous if you let it take advantage of you. Netflix has revealed an official trailer for a sultry thriller titled Loving Adults, a Danish film made by Netflix directed by filmmaker Barbara Topsøe-Rothenborg based on the novel by Anna Ekberg. What happens to a marriage when the love of your life becomes your worst enemy? Loving Adults is a dark and twisted, yet sexy take on a love triangle that you don’t want to be in. It follows a couple who appear to be living the perfect life after their son is declared healthy following a long-term illness. But things unravel when she sees her husband with another younger woman, deciding to refuse to be the woman who got left behind. The film's cast includes Dar Salim and Sonja Richter as the couple, with Sus Wilkins,...

Hey, "Evil" fans. Unfortunately, this article contains some very bad news. It turns out that for some reason, CBS will not be airing a new episode of your favorite show tonight,October 31, 2019. The next,new episode for the "Evil" season 1 line up is episode 6. Instead, you guys can expect to see the new episode 6 air next Thursday night, November 7, 2019 at approximately 9 pm central standard time on CBS of course. So, be sure to mark down that very important date on your TV show calendars. So, I guess a question some of you might have is what will be airing instead on of Evil tonight on CBS? According to the TV Guide listings, CBS will actually airing "Evil" tonight. However, it's going to be a rerun/repeat episode. The rerun they're airing is the 4th episode of this premiere season 1. That episode is titled, "Rose390." CBS' official description for it reads like this,...