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Joaquin Phoenix, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Pascal, Riz Ahmed and Guillermo del Toro are among a group of figures to have added their names to a letter condemning the film industry for its “silence” over the ongoing and deadly impact of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

The letter, published on the first day of Cannes and initially signed by more than 370 actors and filmmakers, also condemned Israel’s killing of Fatma Hassona, the protagonist of festival-bound doc “Put Your Soul in Your Hand and Walk.”

The new signatories also includes the likes of Rooney Mara, Jim Jarmusch, Omar Sy, Peter Straughan, Camille Cottin, Michael Moore, Boots Riley and Alice Rohrwacher.

The letter urged cinema — which it said was a “breeding ground for socially committed works” — to use its art form to “draw lessons from history, to make films that are committed” and to be “present to protect oppressed voices.”

The...

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 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.

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,...

Except perhaps Souleymane’s Story‘s Abou Sangare biking away with the European Actor award (beating out Conclave‘s Ralph Fiennes) there were no surprises at last night’s European Film Awards with Jacques Audiard‘s Emilia Pérez winning four of the five prizes it was nominated for. Karla Sofía Gascón won Best Actress, Audiard won Best Screenwriter and Director while the film the top prize of the evening. Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal’s No Other Land continues to dominate the docu awards circuit which means here is a legit shot at a future Oscar. Here are the noms and winners:

European Director:

Winner: Jacques Audiard for Emilia PÉREZ

Andrea Arnold for Bird

Pedro Almodóvar for The Room Next Door

Mohammad Rasoulof for The Seed Of The Sacred Fig

Maura Delpero for Vermiglio

European Screenwriter:

Winner: Jacques Audiard for Emilia PÉREZ

Magnus von Horn & Line Langebek...

Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” won best film, director, screenwriter and actress at the 37th European Film Awards, which were held Saturday in Lucerne, Switzerland.

The best film nominees included narrative features “The Room Next Door,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” “The Substance” and “Vermiglio,” as well as documentaries “Bye Bye Tiberias,” “Dahomey,” “In Limbo,” “No Other Land” and “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” and animated films “Flow,” “Living Large,” “Savages,” “Sultana’s Dream” and “They Shot the Piano Player.”

The statuette for actress was won by Karla Sofía Gascón for “Emilia Pérez.” The other nominees were Renate Reinsve in “Armand,” Trine Dyrholm in “The Girl With the Needle,” Vic Carmen Sonne in “The Girl With the Needle” and Tilda Swinton in “The Room Next Door.”

The director award went to Audiard for “Emilia Pérez,” who beat Andrea Arnold for “Bird,” Pedro Almodóvar for “The Room Next Door,” Mohammad Rasoulof...

The European Film Awards is taking place in the Swiss city of Lucerne tonight (December 7) and Screen is revealing the winners live from the ceremony, which kicked off at 20.00 Cet.

Scroll down for winners

To read the winners as they are announced, you can refresh the page and scroll down to the full list below.

The ceremony is also being live-streamed below.

Emilia Pérez and The Room Next Door are the front-runners for this year’s awards with four nominations apiece.

Fifteen features compete for the best European film prize, up from five last year. This follows a recent rule...

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...

On Thursday, Mubi (via IndieWire) released the trailer for “The Girl with the Needle,” Denmark’s Oscar entry. Director Magnus von Horn’s stylized period crime drama is a creepy serial killer story told through the eyes of the killer’s unwitting helper.

Here’s Mubi’s official synopsis: “Struggling to survive in post-wwi Copenhagen, a pregnant young factory worker is taken in by a charismatic woman to help run an underground adoption agency. A deep connection forms between them, until an unthinkable discovery changes everything.” Vic Carmen Sonne stars as Karlone, the wet nurse, who is working for Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm). Dagmar is based on Dagmar Overbye, Denmark’s most notorious serial killer, who was convicted of killing nine babies that were left in her care. The film has an Expressionist style that’s appropriate for the time period and the horror of the subject matter.

Von Horn wrote the script with Line Langebek.

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...

‘La Habitación de al Lado’ encabeza las nominaciones y Karla Sofía Gascón opta al premio a la Mejor Actriz. © Warner Bros| Elástica Films | DeAPlaneta

Ya se conocen las nominaciones a la 37ª edición de los Premios del Cine Europeo (Efa), y España está de enhorabuena: La habitación de al lado, de Pedro Almodóvar encabeza las nominaciones (junto a Emilia Pérez) y la española Karla Sofía Gascón se encuentra nominada a la Mejor Actriz. Además, las películas animadas españolas El sueño de la sultana y Dispararon al pianista se llevan dos nominaciones cada una. Los ganadores de los premios se anunciarán el 7 de diciembre de 2024. Aquí está la lista de nominados:

Mejor PELÍCULA Europea

Bye Bye Tiberias

Dahomey

Emilia Pérez

Flow

In Limbo

Living Large

No Other Land

Savages

Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat

El sueño de la sultana

La habitación de al lado

The Seed of the Sacred Fig...

Emilia Pérez and The Room Next Door have emerged as the front-runners for the European Film Awards 2024, with four nominations apiece.

The nominations for the main categories of this year’s awards, which take place on December 7 in Lucerne, were announced this morning by the European Film Academy.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

Fifteen features compete for the best European film prize, up from five last year. This follows a recent rule change which means that films shortlisted for the best documentary and animation categories can also compete in the section.

Emilia Pérez is nominated in the best European film category,...

The nominees for this year’s European Film Awards have been unveiled, with “Emilia Pérez,” “The Substance” and “The Room Next Door” all up for best European film.

Movies also in the running for the ceremony’s top award — which was expanded this year to documentaries and animated features — include Lina Soualem’s “Bye Bye Tiberias”; Mati Diop’s “Dahomey”; Gints Zilbalodis’ “Flow”; Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Basel Adra and Hamdan Balla’s “No Other Land”; Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”; and Maura Delpero’s “Vermiglio.”

“Emilia Pérez” and “The Substance” lead the nominees overall, with each film scoring four respective nominations. The winners will be revealed during an awards ceremony on Dec. 7 in Lucerne, Switzerland.

See all the nominees below.

European Film

“Bye Bye Tiberias” — documentary film, directed by Lina Soualem, produced by Jean-Marie Nizan, Guillaume Malandrin and Ossama Bawardi

“Dahomey” — documentary film, directed by Mati Diop,...

The Substance by Coralie Fargeat, Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard, The Room Next Door by Pedro Almodóvar, and The Seed of the Sacred Fig by Mohammad Rasoulof are among the nominees for the 2024 European Film Awards (EFAs), organizers unveiled on Tuesday.

Emilia Pérez and The Room Next Door earned four noms each, including for best European film and best director. Sacred Fig is up for the best film, best director, and best screenwriter prizes. The Substance is in the running for the best film and best screenwriter honors.

In the best actress race, Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón faces Renate Reinsve, Tilda Swinton for her role in The Room Next Door, and The Girl With the Needle actresses Trine Dyrholm and Vic Carmen Sonne. For The Girl With the Needle, Magnus von Horn and Line Langebek are also nominated in the best screenwriter category.

Queer star Daniel Craig and...

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...

Magnus von Horn’s The Girl With The Needle will represent Denmark as its international feature submission for the 97th Academy Awards.

The black-and-white drama premiered at Cannes in Competition and has since screened at the Polish Film Festival and Pingyao.

Trine Dyrholm and Vic Carmen Sonne star in the story loosely inspired by a real-life serial killer in Copenhagen who murdered numerous babies from 1913-20.

Nordisk Film Creative Alliance’s Malene Blenkov, whose credits include Lone Scherfig’s The Kindness Of Strangers, produces together with Mariusz Włodarski for Lava Films with support from The Danish Film Institute, The Swedish Film Institute,...

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 European Film Academy has revealed the first tranche of film titles that members can consider for nominations for the European Film Awards, which take place on Dec. 7 in Lucerne, Switzerland.

The academy’s selection of 29 titles covers films that had their first official screening between June 1, 2023, and May 31, 2024. Further titles will be announced in September, which will include films that had their premieres in the summer and early autumn festivals, such as Locarno and Venice.

Among the selection are Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” Cannes’ best actress and jury prize winner, Miguel Gomes’ “Grand Tour,” Cannes’ best director winner, Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds Of Kindness,” best actor winner at Cannes, Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” jury special prize winner at Cannes, Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” best screenplay winner at Cannes, “Armand” by Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, the Golden Camera winner at Cannes, Matthias Glasner’s “Dying,...

Cannes Competition titles The Substance, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, and Emilia Perez are among the first set of titles recommended for nominations at this year’s European Film Awards.

Overall, 29 titles have been selected for the first stage of nominations by the European Film Academy Board. The selection includes films from 26 countries. In the coming weeks, the 5,000 members of the European Film Academy will start to vote on the selected films. The winners will be announced at the European Film Awards ceremony in Lucerne, Switzerland, on December 7.

To be eligible for a European Film Awards, films must be European feature films which, among other criteria, had their first official screening between June 1, 2023 and May 31, 2024 and have a European director. The rule book states that should a film director not be European, exceptions can be made if the filmmaker is “provided they have a European refugee or similar status...

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.

Line-up for the 25th edition of the market includes 16 completed features, 15 Wip, 17 films in development.

Films by Sweat director Magnus von Horn and Margrete: Queen of the North filmmaker Charlotte Sieling will be presented at the 25th Nordic Film Market (January 31-February 2), the film marketplace of Goteborg Film Festival.

The projects are among the 15 Nordic films in post-production being showcased in the Works in Progress strand.

Scroll down for the full Market selection

Swedish director von Horn attends with The Girl With The Needle, a horror story set in 1910s Denmark, starring Trine Dyrholm and produced by Creative Alliance’s Malene Blenkov.

She steals the show in the new Bridget Jones film and took a protest to its premiere. The actor-writer-rabblerouser explains why it’s time to shake things up

Sarah Solemani was drunk after a hen do and heading home on a night bus when she bumped into a friend and came up with one of those ideas that seem genius in the early hours of Sunday morning, but invariably never see the light of day. Only, in this case, it did. Less than 48 hours later, she was walking the red carpet at a world premiere in Leicester Square, wearing a dazzling Marchesa gown, and holding a matching placard that read Budget The Baby: Fund creches on film sets #RaisingFilms.

The cause? Improving working conditions for parents in the film industry (the friend she bumped into, Line Langebek, is one of the founders of the initiative, Raising Films, and both women have toddlers). The film?...

New initiative Raising Films launches crowdfunding campaign in a bid to hire a project manager.

Raising Films, a UK-based initiative that aims to provide advice to parents attempting to juggle family with a career in the film business, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to further its cause.

The indiegogo campaign is currently at 25% of its goal to raise £6,000, which it will use to hire a project manager to deliver its objectives.

These objectives include building an online “supportive community” of parents in the film industry and launching its first campaign, which will investigate the issue of childcare, as well as setting up training events at festivals around the world to help filmmakers understand how they can develop their career while raising a family.

The collective of women behind Raising Films includes Hope Dickson Leach, currently producing her first feature The Levelling through iFeatures; London-based screenwriter Line Langebek; producer Nicky Bentham (The Silent Storm); indie film producer [link=nm...

Exclusive: A crime farce, prison drama, Highland thriller and fantastical love story among titles.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival (Eiff) has confirmed the feature film projects and filmmaking teams who will be participating in the fourth year of development and mentoring programme Eiff Network.

The Network participants are:

writer/director John Addis and producer Sukey Richardson with their crime farce Deadbeat;

screenwriter Brian Martin and his prison based drama Inside;

screenwriter Nat Luurtsema, director Isabelle Sieb and producer Diarmuid Hughes with their black comedy drama Poppy;

writer/director Iain Mitchell with his highland thriller Keeper;

screenwriter Melissa Iqbal with her science fiction thriller The Ark;

screenwriter Line Langebek and director Samantha Harrie with the fantastical love story When I Could Fly.

The initiative is run in partnership with story editor Kate Leys and supported by the Creative Skillset Film Skills Fund and Creative Scotland.  Network aims to connect filmmaking teams with industry as they develop feature projects...

Exclusive: A crime farce, prison drama, Highland thriller and fantastical love story among titles.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival (Eiff) has confirmed the feature film projects and filmmaking teams who will be participating in the fourth year of development and mentoring programme Eiff Network.

The Network participants are:

writer/director John Addis and producer Sukey Richardson with their crime farce Deadbeat;

screenwriter Brian Martin and his prison based drama Inside;

screenwriter Nat Luurtsema, director Isabelle Sieb and producer Diarmuid Hughes with their black comedy drama Poppy;

writer/director Iain Mitchell with his highland thriller Keeper;

screenwriter Melissa Iqbal with her science fiction thriller The Ark;

screenwriter Line Langebek and director Samantha Harrie with the fantastical love story When I Could Fly.

The initiative is run in partnership with story editor Kate Leys and supported by the Creative Skillset Film Skills Fund and Creative Scotland.  Network aims to connect filmmaking teams with industry as they develop feature projects...

UK mentor scheme received seventeen applications for each place.

Actor-director Kenneth Branagh and writer-director Hossein Amini are among mentors for training programme Guiding Lights, run by Brighton-based cultural agency Lighthouse.

The 15 mentees include directors, writers, producers and, for the first time, exhibitors, as a result of a new partnership with Film Hub South East, part of the BFI Film Audience Network.

They will receive nine months of personal mentoring.

This year there were seventeen applications for each place on the scheme, which requires candidates to demonstrate experience in their field and their potential for the future.

The scheme began in 2006 and is sponsored by Creative Skillset and Studiocanal. Previous years’ mentors include Danny Boyle, Abi Morgan, Lone Scherfig and Julian Fellowes.

Kevin Macdonald, director of The Last King of Scotland, is taking part for the third time this year. He said: “What I really love about [Guiding Lights] is that I learn as much – maybe more – from the mentee...

Guiding Lights is run by Lighthouse and Creative Skillset and offers participants nine months of one-on-one mentor support, as well as industry training and networking events.

Digital culture agency Lighthouse and Creative Skillset have announced the 15 participants taking part in their 2014 Guiding Lights programme.

In its sixth year, Guiding Lights offers participants nine months of one-on-one mentor support from professionals in the film industry, as well as access to industry training and networking events. The candidates were selected from more than 250 applications.

“The Guiding Lights selection process is always extremely competitive, and this year was no exception,” said Lighthouse senior producer Emily Kyriakides.

“We’re really excited by the past achievements, future potential and talent within the group, and feel that they have a lot to offer each other as well. They’re a very impressive bunch, and we look forward to working with them over the coming months.”

This year, Lighthouse and Creative...

Venue: Los Angeles Film Festival.Some of the most provocative recent films, including “Babel, ” “The Visitor, ” and “The Edge of Heaven, ” have dramatized encounters of people from different cultures. While these films frequently focus on the tragic consequences of such culture clashes, they remind us that we live in a shrinking world where interdependence is crucial. The latest movie to bring this theme into focus, “I'll Come Running, ” has its premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival. While not as seamless as some of those earlier movies, it's an affecting drama of people from different nationalities trying to bridge the gulf that divides them.

“Running” begins with a group of Danish tourists visiting the Alamo and deriding the alien universe of Texas. Enjoying a night on the town in nearby Austin, Pelle (Jon Lange) hooks up with Veronica (Melonie Diaz). A one-night stand leads to a more serious infatuation, but Pelle is set to return to Denmark. An unexpected accident throws everything into turmoil and leads Veronica to travel to Denmark. There she meets Pelle's best friend and family. All of these characters are profoundly changed by a chance encounter that started on a dance floor in Texas.

Diaz (“Raising Victor Vargas, ” “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints”) holds the film together. The role allows her to demonstrate toughness as well as curiosity about all the heartbreaking surprises that life has in store for us. Lange and Christian Tafdrup as Pelle's best friend both bring the requisite magnetism to their roles. There are times when the budgetary limitations hurt the film; some crucial dramatic moments take place offscreen. Still, cinematographer Siobhan Walshe captures the contrasts in the two worlds that Veronica navigates. The open-ended conclusion is honest but somehow less than fully satisfying, and the film as a whole must be considered a flawed but compelling foray into cross-cultural confusion.

Cast: Melonie Diaz, Jon Lange, Christian Tafdrup, Birgitte Raaberg, Hallie Bulleit, Mads Norby. Director: Spencer Parsons. Screenwriters: Line Langebek Knudsen, Spencer Parsons. Executive producers: Thomas Lydholm, Rajen Savjani, Jesper Zartov. Producers: Lars Knudsen, Anish Savjani, Jay Van Hoy. Director of photography: Siobhan Walshe. Production designer: Elliott Hostetler. Music: Graham Reynolds. Costume designer: Caroline Karlen. Editor: David Fabelo. Production companies: Film Science, Van Hoy/Knudsen Productions.

No MPAA rating, 112 minutes.