‘Behind The Iron Curtain’ took the most promising project prize.
Estonian drama series Behind The Iron Curtain won the €3,000 most promising project prize at the TV Beats Forum, part of the Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event platform.
Currently in development, the English-language series will consist of six 45-minute episodes, following three young women from different backgrounds in the chaotic world of the Soviet music industry.
Written by Leana Jalukse, it is produced by Helen Lohmus and Rene Ezra for Estonia’s Oree Films, in co-production with Denmark’s Stikling Film. Jalukse’s debut feature as writer Mother won best Estonian film...
Estonian drama series Behind The Iron Curtain won the €3,000 most promising project prize at the TV Beats Forum, part of the Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event platform.
Currently in development, the English-language series will consist of six 45-minute episodes, following three young women from different backgrounds in the chaotic world of the Soviet music industry.
Written by Leana Jalukse, it is produced by Helen Lohmus and Rene Ezra for Estonia’s Oree Films, in co-production with Denmark’s Stikling Film. Jalukse’s debut feature as writer Mother won best Estonian film...
- 11/14/2023
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Danish star Trine Dyrholm takes on the “bad mom” trope in “Birthday Girl,” which has its world premiere at the Zurich Film Festival, where a girl’s 18th birthday party goes horribly wrong.
Directed by Michael Noer, it sees her character, Nanna, trying to impress estranged daughter (“As in Heaven” breakout Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl) with a cruise to the Caribbean. But when the girl is assaulted, and no one believes her, Nanna needs to step it all the way up.
“Birthday Girl” was produced by Matilda Appelin and Rene Ezra for Nordisk Film Production, with TrustNordisk handling sales.
“I saw her as a mother who wants to be her daughter’s girlfriend. They are on the biggest party boat she could find, because they haven’t seen each other that much and she wants to make up for all that. She is fighting for this closeness and then they share this terrible experience,...
Directed by Michael Noer, it sees her character, Nanna, trying to impress estranged daughter (“As in Heaven” breakout Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl) with a cruise to the Caribbean. But when the girl is assaulted, and no one believes her, Nanna needs to step it all the way up.
“Birthday Girl” was produced by Matilda Appelin and Rene Ezra for Nordisk Film Production, with TrustNordisk handling sales.
“I saw her as a mother who wants to be her daughter’s girlfriend. They are on the biggest party boat she could find, because they haven’t seen each other that much and she wants to make up for all that. She is fighting for this closeness and then they share this terrible experience,...
- 9/28/2023
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Michael Noer directs the suspense drama about a dream vacation gone wrong.
TrustNordisk has closed new deals on Michael Noer’s Birthday Girl for Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Plaion) and Benelux (Cherry Pickers).
Screen can reveal the first image from the film, which stars Trine Dyrholm and Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl. The suspense drama is about a mother, her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friend celebrating a birthday on a cruise ship to the Caribbean. On the first evening, the dream vacation turns into a nightmare and the mother takes justice into her own hands.
Noer’s past films include Before The Frost,...
TrustNordisk has closed new deals on Michael Noer’s Birthday Girl for Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Plaion) and Benelux (Cherry Pickers).
Screen can reveal the first image from the film, which stars Trine Dyrholm and Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl. The suspense drama is about a mother, her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friend celebrating a birthday on a cruise ship to the Caribbean. On the first evening, the dream vacation turns into a nightmare and the mother takes justice into her own hands.
Noer’s past films include Before The Frost,...
- 11/1/2022
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
Michael Noer directs the suspense drama about a dream vacation gone wrong.
TrustNordisk has closed new deals on Michael Noer’s Birthday Girl for Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Plaion) and Benelux (Cherry Pickers).
Screen can reveal the first image from the film, which stars Trine Dyrholm and Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl. The suspense drama is about a mother, her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friend celebrating a birthday on a cruise ship to the Caribbean. On the first evening, the dream vacation turns into a nightmare and the mother takes justice into her own hands.
Noer’s past films include Before The Frost,...
TrustNordisk has closed new deals on Michael Noer’s Birthday Girl for Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Plaion) and Benelux (Cherry Pickers).
Screen can reveal the first image from the film, which stars Trine Dyrholm and Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl. The suspense drama is about a mother, her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friend celebrating a birthday on a cruise ship to the Caribbean. On the first evening, the dream vacation turns into a nightmare and the mother takes justice into her own hands.
Noer’s past films include Before The Frost,...
- 11/1/2022
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
The film, inspired by the director’s own life, is about a girl whose relationship with her father changes when he transitions from male to female.
New Europe Film Sales has sold Malou Reymann’s A Perfectly Normal Family to September Film in the Benelux.
Nordisk is releasing the film this week in Denmark, after it recently won the Big Screen Competition in Rotterdam. The film also played in the Nordic competition in Goteborg.
Other territories are in negotiations now.
A Perfectly Normal Family, inspired by the director’s own life, is about a girl whose relationship with her father...
New Europe Film Sales has sold Malou Reymann’s A Perfectly Normal Family to September Film in the Benelux.
Nordisk is releasing the film this week in Denmark, after it recently won the Big Screen Competition in Rotterdam. The film also played in the Nordic competition in Goteborg.
Other territories are in negotiations now.
A Perfectly Normal Family, inspired by the director’s own life, is about a girl whose relationship with her father...
- 2/19/2020
- by 1100142¦Wendy Mitchell¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
The drama is the directorial debut of Damnish filmmaker Malou Reymann
Haut et Court has acquired French rights to Danish filmmaker Malou Reymann’s debut film A Perfectly Normal Family from New Europe Film Sales and plans to release it in mid-2020.
The film is about a girl whose relationship with her father changes when he transitions from male to female. It has been selected for the Big Screen Competition in Rotterdam with other festivals expected to be confirmed soon.
A Perfectly Normal Family was presented as a work in progress at Goteborg in January and was selected as part...
Haut et Court has acquired French rights to Danish filmmaker Malou Reymann’s debut film A Perfectly Normal Family from New Europe Film Sales and plans to release it in mid-2020.
The film is about a girl whose relationship with her father changes when he transitions from male to female. It has been selected for the Big Screen Competition in Rotterdam with other festivals expected to be confirmed soon.
A Perfectly Normal Family was presented as a work in progress at Goteborg in January and was selected as part...
- 12/19/2019
- by 1100142¦Wendy Mitchell¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
The film is Malou Reymann’s feature directorial debut.
New Europe Film Sales has boarded international sales for Danish drama A Perfectly Normal Family, the feature directorial debut of Danish filmmaker Malou Reymann.
The film was presented as a work in progress at Goteborg in January and this afternoon is part of the C EU Soon showcase at Rome’s Mia.
The story follows a girl whose relationship with her father changes when he transitions from male to female.
A Royal Affair’s Mikkel Boe Følsgaard plays the father, and the cast also features Kaya Toft Loholt, Rigmor Rante and Neel Rønholt.
New Europe Film Sales has boarded international sales for Danish drama A Perfectly Normal Family, the feature directorial debut of Danish filmmaker Malou Reymann.
The film was presented as a work in progress at Goteborg in January and this afternoon is part of the C EU Soon showcase at Rome’s Mia.
The story follows a girl whose relationship with her father changes when he transitions from male to female.
A Royal Affair’s Mikkel Boe Følsgaard plays the father, and the cast also features Kaya Toft Loholt, Rigmor Rante and Neel Rønholt.
- 10/17/2019
- by 1100142¦Wendy Mitchell¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
Dyrholm plays a lawyer who seduces her stepson.
Screen can exclusively reveal the first trailer for Queen Of Hearts, the second feature from May el-Toukhy which will have its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival (January 24 - February 3).
The film, which stars Trine Dyrholm, will play in the festival’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition.
Dyrholm plays a successful lawyer who jeopardises her family and career when she seduces her teenage stepson.
The feature is produced by Caroline Blanco and Rene Ezra for Nordisk Film Denmark with Nordisk Film Production.
TrustNordisk handles international sales on the title.
Sundance 2019 preview - World...
Screen can exclusively reveal the first trailer for Queen Of Hearts, the second feature from May el-Toukhy which will have its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival (January 24 - February 3).
The film, which stars Trine Dyrholm, will play in the festival’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition.
Dyrholm plays a successful lawyer who jeopardises her family and career when she seduces her teenage stepson.
The feature is produced by Caroline Blanco and Rene Ezra for Nordisk Film Denmark with Nordisk Film Production.
TrustNordisk handles international sales on the title.
Sundance 2019 preview - World...
- 1/21/2019
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Dyrholm stars as a lawyer who has an affair with her teenage stepson.
TrustNordisk has boarded international sales for May el-Toukhy’s Danish drama Queen Of Hearts, which is now in post.
Trine Dyrholm (The Commune) stars as a successful lawyer who starts an illicit affair with her teenage stepson, played by rising Swedish talent Gustav Lindh. The story also follows the repercussions of her actions. Magnus Krepper (The Girl Who Played With Fire) plays her husband.
The film was the most buzzy presentation at Haugesund’s Works in Progress in August. El-Toukhy wrote the script with Maren Louise Käehne,...
TrustNordisk has boarded international sales for May el-Toukhy’s Danish drama Queen Of Hearts, which is now in post.
Trine Dyrholm (The Commune) stars as a successful lawyer who starts an illicit affair with her teenage stepson, played by rising Swedish talent Gustav Lindh. The story also follows the repercussions of her actions. Magnus Krepper (The Girl Who Played With Fire) plays her husband.
The film was the most buzzy presentation at Haugesund’s Works in Progress in August. El-Toukhy wrote the script with Maren Louise Käehne,...
- 10/31/2018
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
Eurimages Lab Project Award goes to performance artist story Burning Man from Norway.
Two Danish films were the buzz hits of Haugesund’s works in progress presentations this week. They were Queen Of Hearts, a drama starring Trine Dyrholm as a middle-aged woman having an affair; and political thriller Sons Of Denmark.
Dyrholm, whose credits include The Commune, Oscar winner In A Better World and TV’s The Legacy, stars in May el-Toukhy’s second feature Queen Of Hearts alongside rising Swedish actor Gustav Lindh. The story is about Anne, a lawyer who works with troubled youth, who shockingly starts...
Two Danish films were the buzz hits of Haugesund’s works in progress presentations this week. They were Queen Of Hearts, a drama starring Trine Dyrholm as a middle-aged woman having an affair; and political thriller Sons Of Denmark.
Dyrholm, whose credits include The Commune, Oscar winner In A Better World and TV’s The Legacy, stars in May el-Toukhy’s second feature Queen Of Hearts alongside rising Swedish actor Gustav Lindh. The story is about Anne, a lawyer who works with troubled youth, who shockingly starts...
- 8/24/2018
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
Oversimplification is a dangerous practice when speaking about justice and punishment. Deciding what is right and what is wrong is never a clear-cut affair whether the situation being judged is a simple offense or a mortal sin. To come a conclusion on the moral quality of a someone’s actions is a game ridden with subjectivity and susceptible to biased observations or assumptions, which becomes terrifyingly dangerous when a person’s fate is on the line. But to see the world with such a definitive gaze is not something Danish auteur Tobias Lindholm would ever be accused of. Like in his previous directorial effort, “A Hijacking,” his latest searing drama, “A War,” explores a story where a single act is simultaneously considered heroic and barbaric depending on who you ask. Both are rational interpretations of the same events, but is Tobias mission to eliminate the idea of a nicely wrapped resolution and focus on the vast gray space between these two perceptions of the truth.
In “A War,” we meet company commander Claus M. Pedersen (Pilou Asbæk) first in action as he leads his team’s mission in Afghanistan and then in a gloomy courtroom, an equally threatening battlefront, where he must face the consequences of a choice made during an unnerving incident. Freedom will not bring him closure and incarceration will only expand the ripples of pain already caused. Lindholm leaves his protagonist without a single easy decision while always cautiously considering their repercussions, thus guilt becomes the prevalent looming entity that dictates the narrative. It’s such the level of commitment to resembling reality in Tobias Lindholm’s every artistic move that it’s nearly impossible not to be riveted by the mere humanity of its characters.
We sat down with Tobias Lindholm and lead actor Pilou Asbæk to talk about the extreme steps taken to ensure every ounce of effort put into “A War” worked towards making an honest film and why the real world fascinates Lindholm much more than his own imagination.
The film is currently nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
Note: Several of Lindholm and Asbæk's answers contain spoilers and specific plot details that some readers might want to avoid till after watching the film
Carlos Aguilar: There is a lot of moral ambiguity in "A War," but the recurrent emotion that seems to torture the protagonist and drive the narrative is guilt. It doesn't matter what the resolution is, Claus can't rid himself of that guilt. Why did you feel this needed to be the central concept of the story?
Tobias Lindholm: I think that the phase the world is in right now looking at Afghanistan is a guilty phase. We need to cope with that and understand what happened and for me to materialize that into a human being, one single individual's life, was the whole point. A natural and typical Scandinavian ending would be sending him off to jail and making it dark. But to free him and then trap or making him captive inside himself as he watches those feet getting thrown back knowing, "I will never be able to forgive myself for what happened," was a much more nuanced and interesting story.
Thinking of it, I believe I learned that from "The Hunt." When we wrote that ending, the natural ending for that film as an Scandinavian movie would be to shoot Mads. That would be the dark and gritty side of it, but it just wasn't fulfilling. I was afraid of getting away with this because there are so many emotional setups in the film. Having them compels an ending with him sitting there coping with all these feelings. To be honest we shot both endings because I needed that ending in the editing room. If I hadn't done my job good enough throughout the film at least I knew, "I have an ending that people will respond to because they don't want this guy, this kids' father to go to jail." I knew we could do that, but the truth is that the real ending is a guy who can't live with himself afterwards and is very far away from being freed as he sits in the courtyard.
That guilt became a theme throughout the film in all aspects and I always thought that the best title for this film was already taken and it's "The Goodwill." I think that's an extremely interesting human dilemma because you can't walk into the sun without drawing a shade and, by drawing that shade, you will steal the sun from somebody and that makes you feel guilty. It's kind of a ground rule in life. You can't get away from that. That guilt became, for me, the most important thing to deal with throughout the film; therefore, she is not allowed to have the Afghan family live in the camp. She feels guilty about it but there is no way around it. Everything, no matter what you do, there are no easy choices, and there is always a slice of guilt for you in the big plate of life for you.
CA: How did you Pilou, as an actor, interpret the guilt your character is feeling? What was your approach to such a complex character whose actions might be justifiable depending on who you ask and what moral standpoint you take?
Pilou Asbæk: The guilt is always there no matter what you do, especially when you become a father. It becomes even worse. The script is 120 pages long, I only got 115, so I didn’t know what this guy was hiding. I didn’t know the ending. I didn’t know if the character was guilty or not guilty. I knew that we would end up in a courtroom. I knew I would be prosecuted, but I didn’t know if I was guilty or not guilty. That was never important to me. We made the very early decision that I had a job to portray a professional soldier, but is not just a professional soldier, he is a dad, he is a husband, he is a son. He is all these other things, much more than just a professional soldier. That was the most important for me. I’ll tell you something, if this was a real thing that happened and you’d ask me what I would have done, I would say, “I would have done the same thing." I think that’s what’s interesting. I’m defending my character, and while we were shooting it I would still think that when Maria (Tuva Novotny) was sitting in the car saying, “You Pid. Say it! You might have killed 8 children, but you have three alive at home." I would still be in doubt. In the film I’m a military guy and I trained 20 years for this. This is not ethically correct. Life is not black and white, there is some gray nuance to it.
CA: One of the most thought-provoking lines in the film is when the Afghan man seeking refuge in the Danish camp confronts Claus about how his kids are in a safe place while his might die that night. It's difficult to judge either of the two men because their worldviews are based on different experiences.
Tobias Lindholm: I enjoy the complexity of life. I think that during my childhood, growing up in the 80s, for some reason it became Ok to be politically judgmental and to say, “You are a blond man and not homosexual, so you are privileged.“ That could be right from a political point of view, but on a personal point of view it’s not necessarily true. It could be really hard to be that person. At the same, “Oh there is a black woman in a wheelchair. What a pity. It must be so hard to be her. “ Not necessarily. From a political point of view yes, but on a human level not necessarily. I think it’s time to tell all the complexity of being a human being. I do believe that Klaus is right when he says, “I understand how you feel. I have three kids,” because he identified with this person.
At the same time, the Afghan man has a good point saying, “Yeah, well they are back home. You might miss them but your problem is not as big as mine because my kids are going to die tonight if you don’t help me,” and that’s true as well. If both things are right, then we’ve at least proven the complexity of the world. If we defend both voices or both stances in this film, and in “A Hijacking” as well, if we are able to do that, we will get pretty close to the truth of what it means to be human in this world. That’s the whole point of doing that. Not pointing at anybody saying, “He is a bad” or “He is a good guy.” I do believe that we are all just human beings and we are caught up in our own world. We try to relate to the rest of the world and that is a really hard job.
For some reason right now in our time we have Twitter and Facebook and we try to simplify everything - to communicate. Even our politicians, when they do interviews they know that they need a punch line in 15 seconds explaining the whole problem of a war or a financial crisis. They only have 15 seconds because they want to make it to the news. That’s way too simple because the problem is the world is complex. I do believe that we have a responsibility as storytellers. We have the audience for two hours, so let’s admit that it’s complex and try to create a story knowing that. That was the idea.
CA: In terms of the writing process, how did you tackle a story in which you are juxtaposing two completely distinct settings: a war zone and a courtroom? You did something similar in "A Hijacking," though in that film it was simultaneous, here you first you expose the incident and then analyze its consequences. How do you balance these two battlegrounds?
Tobias Lindholm: I think, as a writer at the beginning is a gut feeling. I had to think about, "When have I been long enough in Afghanistan so that I can allow myself to go home and when have I been home long enough that I want to go have back and see what happened to the guys down there?" The structure is challenging in this one because we have two arenas that we go back and forth to until he is home. Then it all transforms into this courtroom drama and we are in this cold, gray, room where it’s not about right or wrong, it’s about whether you can prove what’s right or wrong. The whole coldness of that was challenging. It was a challenge to go there, but I felt that we had done well and learned a lot in “A Hijacking.” I thought, “Let’s try to see if, without using flashbacks, we can create scenes that will recall emotions from early on.” I do believe that the performance of Dar Salim in the courtroom, the soldier who is uniform, is so important because it calls back emotions to the whole war thing. Butcher is important because he is a game-changer in the courtroom, but the guy that actually puts the war there and reminds me of the war is Dar Salim, particularly when he says, “You have no idea what’s like to be out there.” When I saw that during editing I was like, “Yes! We got it,” because I could feel my brain would start to remember images from what had happened in the war and that made it work.
CA: Pilou, what was different about portraying a character like Claus and the one you play in Tobias' previous film "A Hijacking"? They are both caught up in a situation bigger than themselves but one has clearly more power and options than the other when facing these extraordinary circumstances.
Pilou Asbæk: One is a very external character and one is a very internal character. I do it in a collaboration with the director, which in this case is also the writer. Thank God, because when something didn't work he could rewrite new scenes or new lines for me. I don’t think any character is the same, so I don’t think the approach to any character is the same. With “A Hijacking” I didn’t talked to anyone who had been hijacked, but with “A War” I talked to as many soldiers as possible trying to understand how is it in Afghanistan. Things like, "Are you going around being constantly stressed because you are in a war zone or you forget about it and talk about women? How do you communicate? How are you a leader for your soldiers?" In “A Hijacking” the characters are low status people. That character was a pawn, I’m the king now in this film [Laughs]. That was a complete new way of approaching the character that Tobias created because I’m not a natural king and that’s one of the reasons why he brought in professional soldiers, guys who have served in Afghanistan or served in Iraq. He knew that if I could create the character he would create environments that would protect my acting.
Ca: But being the king is more difficult right? What sort of discussions would you have with Tobias about the character and how did this affect the way you became Klaus?
Pilou Asbæk: You know what they say, at the top of the hill the view is the best. It’s lonely up there, but the view is the best. You have to make decisions. We would discuss this. Every single day I would go and have a discussion with Tobias saying, “Is this the right decision?” and he would be like, “Let’s see. Do the scene.” I’d ask, “Should I call a medic? Should I call the chopper? Should I call the bomb,” he’d answer, “We gotta do the scene.Let’s see.” That constantly frustrating communication between me as an actor and the director transformed into the character Claus. We were discussing the level of stress in that scene. "Is he screaming into the microphone or is he not screaming? What level of stress could a good leader handle?" When we shot the scene I didn’t knot when the explosions were coming and I didn’t know when people would be shooting at us. He created this whole circus and he put us all in it so we would navigate it naturally. It’s the funnest job I’ve ever had.
CA: Tobias, why did you feel it was important for you as a director to create this artificial sense of reality and bring this element of surprise for the actors? In a sense they are as lost as the characters themselves not knowing what comes next or what the protagonist fate will be.
Tobias Lindholm: Because life surprises us and I don’t like the actors to act. I like them to react to the environment around them That’s what we do in real life. Adding those elements of surprise and of real life gives us an edge because everybody needs to be alert all the time and nobody is just waiting for their time to say their line. Everybody needs to listen to what’s going on because things can change around you. Pilou wouldn’t get the lines that the Afghan characters would say, he would only get his own lines. Sometimes they weren’t even lines, I would read the scenes and we would talk about motivation but when talking to the Afghan locals Pilou didn’t know what they were going to say. He just waited for the interpreter to translate it and then react to it. You can feel that because he needs to listen, so his emotions are not something he had decided two weeks before like, “I’m going to react emotionally like this.” It’s all in the moment, “I need to be here right now.” It’s like free jazz, once in a while you do a recording of two hours and it’s really bad and once in a while you do five minutes of magic. We shoot digitally so we can keep on shooting [Laughs].
Pilou Asbæk: That’s scene is 100% written in the script, but when we did the scene Tobias would say, “Is this interesting? We have a whole day. We could shoot this scene the whole day.” Then he went to the Afghan family and I didn’t know shit because I was sitting all alone because that’s the actor I am. I want to concentrate. I want to give it everything. He would say to the Afghan cast, which I found out afterwards, “You don’t want to leave the camp. You are not going to leave the camp. When you enter that door, you, your wife, and your two little children are going to stay. So whatever happens none of you is going to leave the camp.” Then I’m sitting there and Tobias came to me and said, “They can’t stay. Right now I don’t know what’s going to happen in that scene, but I want you to get them out.” To have the director doing this is crazy, but what he was asking was my job. I’m the voice of reason, “We cannot have these people here because this is not a refugee camp.” Then suddenly I had to try to persuade them you, to try to communicate, then you try to get them out physically, all these different things and that’s what I love. That’s why I love working with him.
CA: One of the standout supporting characters in the film is prosecutor Lisbeth Danning. She is brutally unemotional and fiercely resolute about punishing Klaus and making an example out of him. She is not in the film for very long, but she definitely makes an impact.
Tobias Lindholm: I wrote it for Charlotte Munck, I had wanted to work with her for a long time. I think she is extremely brilliant. I think that for some reason, and I don’t get it, she is not working enough. Maybe it’s because she is picky and doesn’t want to do just anything. She is doing a lot of theater and she is extremely good. I felt so confident in her knowing that she would deliver. We didn’t see her before in the story and suddenly she is there. She is so important in the end, but normally I would follow the rules and say, “ I will not introduce any new characters after the middle of the film because we need to have seen everything before climax," but in this case we are in a whole new world for the ending. She was just really honest and precise. I would have the real military prosecutor in Denmark beside her throughout the whole shoot. Whenever she was in doubt I wouldn’t direct her, he would, which gave her that documentary feeling of not seeking emotional expression with me. She was just a tool in the box going for it and that became so clean. There was no fat on that bone. That made it work for me. She decisively avoided any emotion.
At some I really disliked her and felt angry towards her relentlessness. When she was questioning Claus my first instinct was to think, “You don’t know what he went through. You weren’t there!” But at the same time I knew why he was there.
Tobias Lindholm: [Laughs] That’s the moral compass going all sorts of ways because 14 civilians did die after all.
CA: On that same note, the judge was another character that added much more to the films nuanced ethical dilemmas despite being on screen for a very small time. When the verdict was read, something in me told me that she knew the truth and still made that decision.
Tobias Lindholm: When you work like we do there are a lot of obstacles and problems, but one of the gifts is that the audience reads these characters as real human beings. You are invested in them. You try to read them, which is why you are looking for signs. I didn’t talk to her about that. It’s not part of my direction and it’s not part of my intention, but it happens because she is human. She is a real judge and she’s controlled courtrooms before, so she knows what she was doing. I believe that people will read a lot of stuff into that because we are not trying to push feelings and emotions down your throat. We opened up for you to invest in them and by doing that you’ll find truth in these people. In this case, she knew that he was going to be freed from the beginning.
Pilou Asbæk: She did? I didn’t know that because I didn’t have those pages.
Tobias Lindholm: She knew because I needed her to justify it from a legal perspective. I needed to know if could do this or not. She helped me build the whole thing. In real life we are experts in walking around this world reading people, that’s what we do. We enter rooms with strangers and rapidly adapt to what happens there. That’s not something we leave outside a movie theater. We bring it in. If we allow the audience to be invested like that in a movie, they’ll will find truth in what happens no matter what happens.
Pilou Asbæk: It’s interesting because, the way we shot some o the war scenes in Afghanistan was the same way we shot some of the scenes in the courtroom. We would do it as realistic as possible. People wouldn’t be chitchatting. This is a real life courtroom and they treat it with respect. We filmed it chronologically. We had to because we didn’t know the ending. The judge would have all the prosecutor’s arguments, the defense’s arguments, and some days I was sitting there in the courtroom thinking, “She fucking got me,” because I didn’t know my character's fate. I would look at Søren Malling, who played my defense lawyer, and he would say, “Yeah, this is not good,” but the following day was his turn to defend me. It was surreal. When you shoot that way you make it possible for reality to happen. Just like with the kids, and I don’t want to blow our own horn, but I’ve never seen kids be as realistic in a film.
Tobias Lindholm: The key for that was not to write any lines for the kids. I just let them be kids.
CA: I’m going to assume that you’ve never been to Afghanistan, that you’ve never been to war, and that you’ve never been tried. So where did the inspiration come from to create this character and represent this experience so realistically? Did you have extensive conversations with soldiers and people involved? What obstacles did face in your quest to bring as much realism as possible to the screen?
Tobias Lindholm: Exactly. I talked to soldiers, I talked to soldiers’ wives, I talked to Afghan refugees that escaped the war, I talked to Taliban warriors, I talked to defense lawyers, I talked to prosecutors, I talked to judges, kids whose parents have been to war, and in this whole research process I was trying to cope with, from a human standpoint, what is the logic of this story. We went to an Afghan refugee camp in Turkey and cast these locals that were from Helmand, Afghanistan, which is where the Danish soldiers that were part of the film were. After casting them one of the guys told me, “I used to fight for the Taliban.” Suddenly I felt bad. It was a dilemma. I thought, “What is the right choice? What do I do?” So I asked Rene Ezra, my producer, in Danish, so nobody else understood, “Could you please just fake a phone call, tell me that is really important and say that I have to step outside so that we have a chance to talk about this?” So he said, “I’m so sorry to interrupt, there is a phone call for him and we have to go?” I had a tear in my eye and I was choking. I felt that I had gotten so close to reality and I didn’t know what to do with it.
Then I called one of the soldiers who helped build the whole thing, he was kind of responsible for finding the fright guys for me to cast, and I said to him, “What do I do?” He said, “Do what you do all the time. Be honest. Let’s gather all the guys and tell them.” We came home and I sat with all these real soldiers and I said, “I’ve cast this guy. I’m not sure if he is going to be in the film but we are going to work with him because he knows a lot of stuff, but he is former Taliban. He may have been in a firefight with you and he may have even killed one of your friends. How do you feel about that?” Surprisingly the answer was, “Let’s meet him. “
We went back down to Turkey, we met him and we had tea at his house and it ended up being a beautiful conversation where former enemies sat down and actually, on a professional level, had a discussion. They'd ask, “How did you do that? How did you dig those tunnels so you could put in that ID?” and he would answer. Then one of the Danes turned to me and said, “Don’t be nervous. I understand him better than I understand you. He fought the war. You just stayed home and had fun.” I was like, “Ok, got it,” and we started working. He helped us throughout the process making sure that point of view was defended as well, that we didn’t lie about their methods, and that we didn’t tell something that wasn’t true about the way that they would fight. That, of course, gave our Dane soldiers a lot of realty to channel in their acting.
Pilou Asbæk: I remember Tobias having this meeting with this refugee who had been fighting for the Taliban. He called me at night when I was Copenhagen and he said, “Pilou, would you mind acting in a film where we have real ex-Taliban and real life Danish soldiers?” I said, “I don’t know what do you think?,” and Tobias goes, “I'm not sure, but I can tell you one thing, even if the film sucks, the behind the scenes is going to be great!”
CA: There numerous films about the American experience in Afghanistan, "A War" is clearly a story of that same war from a Danish perspective. Although it might be from a specific cultural point of view the universal qualities embedded in these characters and the drama are undeniably compelling regardless of what is our personal idea of a war like this.
Tobias Lindholm: I think the only thing we can contribute in this world is honesty. For me trying to have an American point of view in a film would be impossible, but I do believe that the reason that a film like this can translate and can be seen all over the world is the fact that it’s really honest and bound to a local identity because then one can relate to that. Had we tried to change the Danish reality so that it looked a little more like an American reality we wouldn’t have gained this honesty and we would have kept the audience from connecting to the characters. I don’t like my own imagination. I’m not entertained by it. I think it’s pretty boring to sit there and make stuff up, but I love the world around me. The world that I can access is a Danish world, I’m from there, so it makes so much sense to just go in a portray that. Of course, we are proud and happy that it’s now traveling and we are fortunate enough to travel with it, show it, and meet people that have seen it and have these conversations. It makes it all worth it. We don’t have careers, we have lives and they have to make sense. It definitely makes sense to sit here and talk with you and then show an audience our little Danish film.
"A War" will opens today in La the Sundance Cinemas and Laemmle Royal and in NYC at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema and AMC Empire 25...
In “A War,” we meet company commander Claus M. Pedersen (Pilou Asbæk) first in action as he leads his team’s mission in Afghanistan and then in a gloomy courtroom, an equally threatening battlefront, where he must face the consequences of a choice made during an unnerving incident. Freedom will not bring him closure and incarceration will only expand the ripples of pain already caused. Lindholm leaves his protagonist without a single easy decision while always cautiously considering their repercussions, thus guilt becomes the prevalent looming entity that dictates the narrative. It’s such the level of commitment to resembling reality in Tobias Lindholm’s every artistic move that it’s nearly impossible not to be riveted by the mere humanity of its characters.
We sat down with Tobias Lindholm and lead actor Pilou Asbæk to talk about the extreme steps taken to ensure every ounce of effort put into “A War” worked towards making an honest film and why the real world fascinates Lindholm much more than his own imagination.
The film is currently nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.
Note: Several of Lindholm and Asbæk's answers contain spoilers and specific plot details that some readers might want to avoid till after watching the film
Carlos Aguilar: There is a lot of moral ambiguity in "A War," but the recurrent emotion that seems to torture the protagonist and drive the narrative is guilt. It doesn't matter what the resolution is, Claus can't rid himself of that guilt. Why did you feel this needed to be the central concept of the story?
Tobias Lindholm: I think that the phase the world is in right now looking at Afghanistan is a guilty phase. We need to cope with that and understand what happened and for me to materialize that into a human being, one single individual's life, was the whole point. A natural and typical Scandinavian ending would be sending him off to jail and making it dark. But to free him and then trap or making him captive inside himself as he watches those feet getting thrown back knowing, "I will never be able to forgive myself for what happened," was a much more nuanced and interesting story.
Thinking of it, I believe I learned that from "The Hunt." When we wrote that ending, the natural ending for that film as an Scandinavian movie would be to shoot Mads. That would be the dark and gritty side of it, but it just wasn't fulfilling. I was afraid of getting away with this because there are so many emotional setups in the film. Having them compels an ending with him sitting there coping with all these feelings. To be honest we shot both endings because I needed that ending in the editing room. If I hadn't done my job good enough throughout the film at least I knew, "I have an ending that people will respond to because they don't want this guy, this kids' father to go to jail." I knew we could do that, but the truth is that the real ending is a guy who can't live with himself afterwards and is very far away from being freed as he sits in the courtyard.
That guilt became a theme throughout the film in all aspects and I always thought that the best title for this film was already taken and it's "The Goodwill." I think that's an extremely interesting human dilemma because you can't walk into the sun without drawing a shade and, by drawing that shade, you will steal the sun from somebody and that makes you feel guilty. It's kind of a ground rule in life. You can't get away from that. That guilt became, for me, the most important thing to deal with throughout the film; therefore, she is not allowed to have the Afghan family live in the camp. She feels guilty about it but there is no way around it. Everything, no matter what you do, there are no easy choices, and there is always a slice of guilt for you in the big plate of life for you.
CA: How did you Pilou, as an actor, interpret the guilt your character is feeling? What was your approach to such a complex character whose actions might be justifiable depending on who you ask and what moral standpoint you take?
Pilou Asbæk: The guilt is always there no matter what you do, especially when you become a father. It becomes even worse. The script is 120 pages long, I only got 115, so I didn’t know what this guy was hiding. I didn’t know the ending. I didn’t know if the character was guilty or not guilty. I knew that we would end up in a courtroom. I knew I would be prosecuted, but I didn’t know if I was guilty or not guilty. That was never important to me. We made the very early decision that I had a job to portray a professional soldier, but is not just a professional soldier, he is a dad, he is a husband, he is a son. He is all these other things, much more than just a professional soldier. That was the most important for me. I’ll tell you something, if this was a real thing that happened and you’d ask me what I would have done, I would say, “I would have done the same thing." I think that’s what’s interesting. I’m defending my character, and while we were shooting it I would still think that when Maria (Tuva Novotny) was sitting in the car saying, “You Pid. Say it! You might have killed 8 children, but you have three alive at home." I would still be in doubt. In the film I’m a military guy and I trained 20 years for this. This is not ethically correct. Life is not black and white, there is some gray nuance to it.
CA: One of the most thought-provoking lines in the film is when the Afghan man seeking refuge in the Danish camp confronts Claus about how his kids are in a safe place while his might die that night. It's difficult to judge either of the two men because their worldviews are based on different experiences.
Tobias Lindholm: I enjoy the complexity of life. I think that during my childhood, growing up in the 80s, for some reason it became Ok to be politically judgmental and to say, “You are a blond man and not homosexual, so you are privileged.“ That could be right from a political point of view, but on a personal point of view it’s not necessarily true. It could be really hard to be that person. At the same, “Oh there is a black woman in a wheelchair. What a pity. It must be so hard to be her. “ Not necessarily. From a political point of view yes, but on a human level not necessarily. I think it’s time to tell all the complexity of being a human being. I do believe that Klaus is right when he says, “I understand how you feel. I have three kids,” because he identified with this person.
At the same time, the Afghan man has a good point saying, “Yeah, well they are back home. You might miss them but your problem is not as big as mine because my kids are going to die tonight if you don’t help me,” and that’s true as well. If both things are right, then we’ve at least proven the complexity of the world. If we defend both voices or both stances in this film, and in “A Hijacking” as well, if we are able to do that, we will get pretty close to the truth of what it means to be human in this world. That’s the whole point of doing that. Not pointing at anybody saying, “He is a bad” or “He is a good guy.” I do believe that we are all just human beings and we are caught up in our own world. We try to relate to the rest of the world and that is a really hard job.
For some reason right now in our time we have Twitter and Facebook and we try to simplify everything - to communicate. Even our politicians, when they do interviews they know that they need a punch line in 15 seconds explaining the whole problem of a war or a financial crisis. They only have 15 seconds because they want to make it to the news. That’s way too simple because the problem is the world is complex. I do believe that we have a responsibility as storytellers. We have the audience for two hours, so let’s admit that it’s complex and try to create a story knowing that. That was the idea.
CA: In terms of the writing process, how did you tackle a story in which you are juxtaposing two completely distinct settings: a war zone and a courtroom? You did something similar in "A Hijacking," though in that film it was simultaneous, here you first you expose the incident and then analyze its consequences. How do you balance these two battlegrounds?
Tobias Lindholm: I think, as a writer at the beginning is a gut feeling. I had to think about, "When have I been long enough in Afghanistan so that I can allow myself to go home and when have I been home long enough that I want to go have back and see what happened to the guys down there?" The structure is challenging in this one because we have two arenas that we go back and forth to until he is home. Then it all transforms into this courtroom drama and we are in this cold, gray, room where it’s not about right or wrong, it’s about whether you can prove what’s right or wrong. The whole coldness of that was challenging. It was a challenge to go there, but I felt that we had done well and learned a lot in “A Hijacking.” I thought, “Let’s try to see if, without using flashbacks, we can create scenes that will recall emotions from early on.” I do believe that the performance of Dar Salim in the courtroom, the soldier who is uniform, is so important because it calls back emotions to the whole war thing. Butcher is important because he is a game-changer in the courtroom, but the guy that actually puts the war there and reminds me of the war is Dar Salim, particularly when he says, “You have no idea what’s like to be out there.” When I saw that during editing I was like, “Yes! We got it,” because I could feel my brain would start to remember images from what had happened in the war and that made it work.
CA: Pilou, what was different about portraying a character like Claus and the one you play in Tobias' previous film "A Hijacking"? They are both caught up in a situation bigger than themselves but one has clearly more power and options than the other when facing these extraordinary circumstances.
Pilou Asbæk: One is a very external character and one is a very internal character. I do it in a collaboration with the director, which in this case is also the writer. Thank God, because when something didn't work he could rewrite new scenes or new lines for me. I don’t think any character is the same, so I don’t think the approach to any character is the same. With “A Hijacking” I didn’t talked to anyone who had been hijacked, but with “A War” I talked to as many soldiers as possible trying to understand how is it in Afghanistan. Things like, "Are you going around being constantly stressed because you are in a war zone or you forget about it and talk about women? How do you communicate? How are you a leader for your soldiers?" In “A Hijacking” the characters are low status people. That character was a pawn, I’m the king now in this film [Laughs]. That was a complete new way of approaching the character that Tobias created because I’m not a natural king and that’s one of the reasons why he brought in professional soldiers, guys who have served in Afghanistan or served in Iraq. He knew that if I could create the character he would create environments that would protect my acting.
Ca: But being the king is more difficult right? What sort of discussions would you have with Tobias about the character and how did this affect the way you became Klaus?
Pilou Asbæk: You know what they say, at the top of the hill the view is the best. It’s lonely up there, but the view is the best. You have to make decisions. We would discuss this. Every single day I would go and have a discussion with Tobias saying, “Is this the right decision?” and he would be like, “Let’s see. Do the scene.” I’d ask, “Should I call a medic? Should I call the chopper? Should I call the bomb,” he’d answer, “We gotta do the scene.Let’s see.” That constantly frustrating communication between me as an actor and the director transformed into the character Claus. We were discussing the level of stress in that scene. "Is he screaming into the microphone or is he not screaming? What level of stress could a good leader handle?" When we shot the scene I didn’t knot when the explosions were coming and I didn’t know when people would be shooting at us. He created this whole circus and he put us all in it so we would navigate it naturally. It’s the funnest job I’ve ever had.
CA: Tobias, why did you feel it was important for you as a director to create this artificial sense of reality and bring this element of surprise for the actors? In a sense they are as lost as the characters themselves not knowing what comes next or what the protagonist fate will be.
Tobias Lindholm: Because life surprises us and I don’t like the actors to act. I like them to react to the environment around them That’s what we do in real life. Adding those elements of surprise and of real life gives us an edge because everybody needs to be alert all the time and nobody is just waiting for their time to say their line. Everybody needs to listen to what’s going on because things can change around you. Pilou wouldn’t get the lines that the Afghan characters would say, he would only get his own lines. Sometimes they weren’t even lines, I would read the scenes and we would talk about motivation but when talking to the Afghan locals Pilou didn’t know what they were going to say. He just waited for the interpreter to translate it and then react to it. You can feel that because he needs to listen, so his emotions are not something he had decided two weeks before like, “I’m going to react emotionally like this.” It’s all in the moment, “I need to be here right now.” It’s like free jazz, once in a while you do a recording of two hours and it’s really bad and once in a while you do five minutes of magic. We shoot digitally so we can keep on shooting [Laughs].
Pilou Asbæk: That’s scene is 100% written in the script, but when we did the scene Tobias would say, “Is this interesting? We have a whole day. We could shoot this scene the whole day.” Then he went to the Afghan family and I didn’t know shit because I was sitting all alone because that’s the actor I am. I want to concentrate. I want to give it everything. He would say to the Afghan cast, which I found out afterwards, “You don’t want to leave the camp. You are not going to leave the camp. When you enter that door, you, your wife, and your two little children are going to stay. So whatever happens none of you is going to leave the camp.” Then I’m sitting there and Tobias came to me and said, “They can’t stay. Right now I don’t know what’s going to happen in that scene, but I want you to get them out.” To have the director doing this is crazy, but what he was asking was my job. I’m the voice of reason, “We cannot have these people here because this is not a refugee camp.” Then suddenly I had to try to persuade them you, to try to communicate, then you try to get them out physically, all these different things and that’s what I love. That’s why I love working with him.
CA: One of the standout supporting characters in the film is prosecutor Lisbeth Danning. She is brutally unemotional and fiercely resolute about punishing Klaus and making an example out of him. She is not in the film for very long, but she definitely makes an impact.
Tobias Lindholm: I wrote it for Charlotte Munck, I had wanted to work with her for a long time. I think she is extremely brilliant. I think that for some reason, and I don’t get it, she is not working enough. Maybe it’s because she is picky and doesn’t want to do just anything. She is doing a lot of theater and she is extremely good. I felt so confident in her knowing that she would deliver. We didn’t see her before in the story and suddenly she is there. She is so important in the end, but normally I would follow the rules and say, “ I will not introduce any new characters after the middle of the film because we need to have seen everything before climax," but in this case we are in a whole new world for the ending. She was just really honest and precise. I would have the real military prosecutor in Denmark beside her throughout the whole shoot. Whenever she was in doubt I wouldn’t direct her, he would, which gave her that documentary feeling of not seeking emotional expression with me. She was just a tool in the box going for it and that became so clean. There was no fat on that bone. That made it work for me. She decisively avoided any emotion.
At some I really disliked her and felt angry towards her relentlessness. When she was questioning Claus my first instinct was to think, “You don’t know what he went through. You weren’t there!” But at the same time I knew why he was there.
Tobias Lindholm: [Laughs] That’s the moral compass going all sorts of ways because 14 civilians did die after all.
CA: On that same note, the judge was another character that added much more to the films nuanced ethical dilemmas despite being on screen for a very small time. When the verdict was read, something in me told me that she knew the truth and still made that decision.
Tobias Lindholm: When you work like we do there are a lot of obstacles and problems, but one of the gifts is that the audience reads these characters as real human beings. You are invested in them. You try to read them, which is why you are looking for signs. I didn’t talk to her about that. It’s not part of my direction and it’s not part of my intention, but it happens because she is human. She is a real judge and she’s controlled courtrooms before, so she knows what she was doing. I believe that people will read a lot of stuff into that because we are not trying to push feelings and emotions down your throat. We opened up for you to invest in them and by doing that you’ll find truth in these people. In this case, she knew that he was going to be freed from the beginning.
Pilou Asbæk: She did? I didn’t know that because I didn’t have those pages.
Tobias Lindholm: She knew because I needed her to justify it from a legal perspective. I needed to know if could do this or not. She helped me build the whole thing. In real life we are experts in walking around this world reading people, that’s what we do. We enter rooms with strangers and rapidly adapt to what happens there. That’s not something we leave outside a movie theater. We bring it in. If we allow the audience to be invested like that in a movie, they’ll will find truth in what happens no matter what happens.
Pilou Asbæk: It’s interesting because, the way we shot some o the war scenes in Afghanistan was the same way we shot some of the scenes in the courtroom. We would do it as realistic as possible. People wouldn’t be chitchatting. This is a real life courtroom and they treat it with respect. We filmed it chronologically. We had to because we didn’t know the ending. The judge would have all the prosecutor’s arguments, the defense’s arguments, and some days I was sitting there in the courtroom thinking, “She fucking got me,” because I didn’t know my character's fate. I would look at Søren Malling, who played my defense lawyer, and he would say, “Yeah, this is not good,” but the following day was his turn to defend me. It was surreal. When you shoot that way you make it possible for reality to happen. Just like with the kids, and I don’t want to blow our own horn, but I’ve never seen kids be as realistic in a film.
Tobias Lindholm: The key for that was not to write any lines for the kids. I just let them be kids.
CA: I’m going to assume that you’ve never been to Afghanistan, that you’ve never been to war, and that you’ve never been tried. So where did the inspiration come from to create this character and represent this experience so realistically? Did you have extensive conversations with soldiers and people involved? What obstacles did face in your quest to bring as much realism as possible to the screen?
Tobias Lindholm: Exactly. I talked to soldiers, I talked to soldiers’ wives, I talked to Afghan refugees that escaped the war, I talked to Taliban warriors, I talked to defense lawyers, I talked to prosecutors, I talked to judges, kids whose parents have been to war, and in this whole research process I was trying to cope with, from a human standpoint, what is the logic of this story. We went to an Afghan refugee camp in Turkey and cast these locals that were from Helmand, Afghanistan, which is where the Danish soldiers that were part of the film were. After casting them one of the guys told me, “I used to fight for the Taliban.” Suddenly I felt bad. It was a dilemma. I thought, “What is the right choice? What do I do?” So I asked Rene Ezra, my producer, in Danish, so nobody else understood, “Could you please just fake a phone call, tell me that is really important and say that I have to step outside so that we have a chance to talk about this?” So he said, “I’m so sorry to interrupt, there is a phone call for him and we have to go?” I had a tear in my eye and I was choking. I felt that I had gotten so close to reality and I didn’t know what to do with it.
Then I called one of the soldiers who helped build the whole thing, he was kind of responsible for finding the fright guys for me to cast, and I said to him, “What do I do?” He said, “Do what you do all the time. Be honest. Let’s gather all the guys and tell them.” We came home and I sat with all these real soldiers and I said, “I’ve cast this guy. I’m not sure if he is going to be in the film but we are going to work with him because he knows a lot of stuff, but he is former Taliban. He may have been in a firefight with you and he may have even killed one of your friends. How do you feel about that?” Surprisingly the answer was, “Let’s meet him. “
We went back down to Turkey, we met him and we had tea at his house and it ended up being a beautiful conversation where former enemies sat down and actually, on a professional level, had a discussion. They'd ask, “How did you do that? How did you dig those tunnels so you could put in that ID?” and he would answer. Then one of the Danes turned to me and said, “Don’t be nervous. I understand him better than I understand you. He fought the war. You just stayed home and had fun.” I was like, “Ok, got it,” and we started working. He helped us throughout the process making sure that point of view was defended as well, that we didn’t lie about their methods, and that we didn’t tell something that wasn’t true about the way that they would fight. That, of course, gave our Dane soldiers a lot of realty to channel in their acting.
Pilou Asbæk: I remember Tobias having this meeting with this refugee who had been fighting for the Taliban. He called me at night when I was Copenhagen and he said, “Pilou, would you mind acting in a film where we have real ex-Taliban and real life Danish soldiers?” I said, “I don’t know what do you think?,” and Tobias goes, “I'm not sure, but I can tell you one thing, even if the film sucks, the behind the scenes is going to be great!”
CA: There numerous films about the American experience in Afghanistan, "A War" is clearly a story of that same war from a Danish perspective. Although it might be from a specific cultural point of view the universal qualities embedded in these characters and the drama are undeniably compelling regardless of what is our personal idea of a war like this.
Tobias Lindholm: I think the only thing we can contribute in this world is honesty. For me trying to have an American point of view in a film would be impossible, but I do believe that the reason that a film like this can translate and can be seen all over the world is the fact that it’s really honest and bound to a local identity because then one can relate to that. Had we tried to change the Danish reality so that it looked a little more like an American reality we wouldn’t have gained this honesty and we would have kept the audience from connecting to the characters. I don’t like my own imagination. I’m not entertained by it. I think it’s pretty boring to sit there and make stuff up, but I love the world around me. The world that I can access is a Danish world, I’m from there, so it makes so much sense to just go in a portray that. Of course, we are proud and happy that it’s now traveling and we are fortunate enough to travel with it, show it, and meet people that have seen it and have these conversations. It makes it all worth it. We don’t have careers, we have lives and they have to make sense. It definitely makes sense to sit here and talk with you and then show an audience our little Danish film.
"A War" will opens today in La the Sundance Cinemas and Laemmle Royal and in NYC at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema and AMC Empire 25...
- 2/13/2016
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Sydney's Buzz
Despite his lengthy filmography as a scribe (mostly Thomas Vinterberg’s righthand man Submarino, The Hunt and upcoming The Commune) and his previous outings as a filmmaker in the grizzly R (2010) and gritty A Hijacking (2012), Tobias Lindholm hasn’t been part of the make-up of the festival in terms of exhibiting a film there, but the Dane has been present as a creative advisor specifically at the January Screenwriters Lab (2014) and June Screenwriters Lab (2015). Rejoining his muse actor Pilou Asbæk, his third film which Variety called “engrossing, impeccably sensitive Afghanistan War drama makes good on the promise of,” and THR suggested that “complexity emerges through a combination of careful writing and a little work on the viewers’ part“) received coin support via the 2014 Sundance Institute/Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award and would eventually land on the Lido in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section. Denmark’s official selection for the...
- 11/23/2015
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
A War
Director: Tobias Lindholm // Writer: Tobias Lindholm
Director and screenwriter Tobias Lindholm has received more attention for his work as screenwriter on a pair of Thomas Vinterberg titles (Submarino, 2010; The Hunt, 2012), and the upcoming The Commune. However, he’s at the forefront of rising Danish filmmakers thanks to his own films. Each year he’s worked with Vinterberg, Lindholm has also premiered his own directorial efforts, including 2010’s excellent R and 2012’s more famous A Hijacking. He’s back with A War, a film meant to conclude a loose trilogy centered on ‘desperate men in small rooms.’ Reuniting once more with Pilou Asbaek, who’s starred in all three films, as well as Soren Malling, a Danish commander must make a difficult decision when his troop falls under heavy gunfire, ultimately seeing him face war crime charges.
Cast: Dar Salim, Pilou Asbæk, Tuva Novotny
Producers: Nordisk Film Production’s...
Director: Tobias Lindholm // Writer: Tobias Lindholm
Director and screenwriter Tobias Lindholm has received more attention for his work as screenwriter on a pair of Thomas Vinterberg titles (Submarino, 2010; The Hunt, 2012), and the upcoming The Commune. However, he’s at the forefront of rising Danish filmmakers thanks to his own films. Each year he’s worked with Vinterberg, Lindholm has also premiered his own directorial efforts, including 2010’s excellent R and 2012’s more famous A Hijacking. He’s back with A War, a film meant to conclude a loose trilogy centered on ‘desperate men in small rooms.’ Reuniting once more with Pilou Asbaek, who’s starred in all three films, as well as Soren Malling, a Danish commander must make a difficult decision when his troop falls under heavy gunfire, ultimately seeing him face war crime charges.
Cast: Dar Salim, Pilou Asbæk, Tuva Novotny
Producers: Nordisk Film Production’s...
- 1/8/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
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