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In the catchy Scandi-pop song that plays over the end credits of Sauna, Anton Falck’s “All the Pretty Boys,” the singer fantasizes about being prince charming in a world of beautiful men, immune from rejection. From the outside, that dream might seem attainable for Johan, a recent transplant to Copenhagen who has come to the big city to live more openly as a young gay man. His job working the reception desk at Adonis, a cruisy male-only bathhouse, surrounds him with the sounds, the smells and the sweaty physical sensations of sex and desire.

Even the more squalid side of Johan’s work — mopping sticky floors and wiping down vinyl mattresses and glory holes between shifts, when the dim lighting of operating hours makes way for fluorescents — seems tolerable when weighed against the instant gratification of anonymous backroom hookups, one-night stands and hedonistic queer clubbing. Those pleasures presumably were...

Danish queer sex drama “Sauna,” a Sundance Festival hit, has closed its first significant international market deals, sales house TrustNordisk licensing North America to Breaking Glass, Germany to Salzgeber & Co Medien and Spain to Filmin.

Nordisk Film Distribution will bow “Sauna” in Denmark on April 24.

The sales underscore an early pattern in early 2025 international deal-making. much driven by genre, animation, star auteurs and also breakout auteurs playing off “A” fest acclaim. Given the relative rapidity of the deals, more will be in the offing.

“We are incredibly proud of the international journey ‘Sauna’ is taking,” said TrustNordisk Managing Director Susan Wendt. “It’s truly wonderful to see this bold, honest and deeply human story resonating with audiences beyond Denmark. With key sales to North America, Germany, and Spain, ‘Sauna’ proves that powerful and authentic voices from Danish cinema can travel far and touch hearts across borders.”

The sales deals also...

The Copenhagen sauna and sex club where Johan (Magnus Juhl Andersen) works is called Adonis, and he does his best to represent the brand. Tall, toned and tan, with a center-parted mop of wavy blond hair, he’s the very picture of Scandi male beauty — and a gay man who has never had his desirability questioned or challenged by others. It’s a privilege he must finally reckon with when he falls for William (Nina Rask), a trans man still finding his place in a masculine sphere that isn’t always accepting of his body or his desires. A thoughtful, tactile debut feature by Danish writer-director Mathias Broe, “Sauna” traces the awkward, formative romance that ensues between these two unexpectedly matched lovers, and is at no great pains to suggest they’re soulmates.

A director of several queer-themed short films whose nonfiction title “Amfi” won a Danish Academy Award in...

Mathias Broe’s ‘Sauna’ is a groundbreaking film for Denmark, featuring its first trans lead, Nina Rask, in the role of William. Broe explained, “It’s the first time we have a trans person in a leading role in a feature film in Denmark. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have made this movie.”

The film, which features both professional and non-professional queer actors, aims to authentically depict queer stories. Broe emphasized, “We have to create a real story with real human beings,” and the film explores themes of love and conflict within the queer community.

Rask stars alongside Magnus Juhl Andersen, who plays Johan, a receptionist at a gay sauna. Broe noted that creating a story about trans men in such spaces was important: “A sauna is a good place to explore such conflict because for a trans guy, it’s hard to access these spaces.” The movie also tackles the...

Mathias Broe’s “Sauna,” selected for World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance, is making history.

“It’s the first time we have a trans person in a leading role in a feature film in Denmark. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have made this movie,” the debuting director tells Variety.

“We don’t have many trans actors in Denmark and in order to carry an entire feature, you need experience. That’s why we chose Nina Rask, who is trans-masc and a big comedian and actor,” Broe tells Variety.

“We ended up using non-professional queer actors in minor roles and did a lot of research within the community to make it as authentic as possible. Creating queer stories can be very tricky, you want to do everything right, but we had to say: ‘We’re not going to make a good film if we do everything ‘right.’ We have to create a...

Thirty years after introducing viewers to a sadistic serial killer in the Danish horror film Nightwatch (aka Nattevagten), writer/director Ole Bornedal has returned to the world of his harrowing film with the sequel Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever. Easily one of my favorite films of the year thus far, Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever is a relentlessly tense examination of the damaging effects of unresolved trauma on families, the painful healing of the grieving process, and how the past can literally come back to haunt you... with something sharp in its hands.

Featuring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Kim Bodnia, and Ulf Pilgaard reprising their roles from the original Nightwatch alongside a talented roster of actors who are new to this franchise, Demons Are Forever is now streaming on Shudder, and Daily Dead caught up with writer/director Ole Bornedal to discuss continuing the story of Nightwatch 30 years later, exploring the aftereffects of violent trauma through his film's characters,...

Plot: Thirty years after the events of the 1994 serial killer thriller Nightwatch, the daughter of two of the deeply damaged surviving characters takes her dad’s old job as night watchman at the Department of Forensic Medicine. Investigating the events that ruined her parents’ lives, she accidentally kicks off a new killing spree.

Review: Back in 1994, Danish filmmaker Ole Bornedal brought the world a serial killer thriller called Nightwatch, about a young law student named Martin (played by future Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who takes a job as night watchman at the Department of Forensic Medicine in Copenhagen and inadvertently gets mixed up in the investigation of the serial killer case that has been providing the morgue with a lot of fresh corpses. By the end of the film, Martin, his girlfriend Kalinka, and his best friend Jens have all had close calls with the killer, who is...

Nordic sales powerhouse TrustNordisk is launching international sales on queer sex drama Sauna, which has begun filming this month in Denmark.

Set in the Copenhagen queer community, the film follows Johan, a young man who believes he can find community working in a gay sauna, and who then falls in love when he meets transgender William.

It is the feature debut for Danish director Mathias Broe, who wrote the film with William Lippert based on Mads Ananda Lodahl’s novel of the same name.

Mads-August Hertz is producing for Nordisk Film Production with support from the New Danish Screen at the Danish Film Institute,...

Back in 1994, long before he was cast to play Jaime Lannister in the hit series Game of Thrones, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau made his feature film debut in writer/director Ole Bornedal’s thriller Nightwatch, where he played a character named Martin, a law student who takes a job working as a night watchman at The Department of Forensic Medicine in Copenhagen just as the place starts filling up with the bodies of a serial killer’s victims. Now, thirty years after working on the original Nightwatch together, Bornedal and Coster-Waldau have re-teamed for a “30 years” later sequel called Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever, which is set to be released through the Shudder streaming service on May 17th – and with that date just a month away, a trailer for the film has arrived online! You can check it out in the embed above.

Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever has the following synopsis: 22-year-old medical...

"Isn't that Wörmer's signature?" Shudder has revealed the official US trailer for the Danish horror mystery sequel Nightwatch 2, known as Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever, from the same Danish filmmaker Ole Bornedal. Not to be confused with the two Russian movies Night Watch and Day Watch, this is not related - it's a new sequel to Bornedal's 1994 movie Nightwatch, which was remade into Nightwatch in 1997 with Ewan McGregor. The original also starred Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who has become considerably more famous after "Game of Thrones". In this sequel, Martin's daughter, Emma, takes up a night watch job to find out what happened to her parents almost thirty years ago. A meeting with Wörmer in his cell pulls the serial killer out of his coma and sets in motion a chain of fateful events. Starring Fanny Leander Bornedal, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Kim Bodnia, Sonja Richter, Ulf Pilgaard, Casper Kjær Jensen, Paprika Steen, and Nina Rask.

Back in 1994, long before he was cast to play Jaime Lannister in the hit series Game of Thrones, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau made his feature film debut in the thriller Nightwatch, where he played a character named Martin, a law student who takes a job working as a night watchman at The Department of Forensic Medicine in Copenhagen just as the place starts filling up with the bodies of a serial killer’s victims. Nightwatch was so well-received that writer/director Ole Bornedal was given the opportunity to direct an English-language remake, which he wrote with Steven Soderbergh. Ewan McGregor played the Martin role in that 1997 film. Now, thirty years after working on the original Nightwatch together, Bornedal and Coster-Waldau have re-teamed for a “30 years” later sequel called Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever, which is set to be released through the Shudder streaming service on May 17th!

Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever has the...