Pernille Fischer Christensen

A FAMILY EEN FILM VAN Pernille Fischer Christensen WILD BUNCH HAARLEMMERDIJK 159 - 1013 KH – AMSTERDAM WWW.WILDBUNCH.NL [email protected] WILDBUNCHblx A FAMILY – Pernille Fischer Christensen PROJECT SUMMARY Een productie van ZENTROPA Taal DEENS Originele titel EN FAMILIE Lengte 99 MINUTEN Genre DRAMA Land van herkomst DENEMARKEN Filmmaker PERNILLE FISCHER CHRISTENSEN Hoofdrollen LENE MARIA CHRISTENSEN (Brothers, Terribly Happy) JESPER CHRISTENSEN (Melancholia, The Young Victoria, The Interpreter) PILOU AESBAK (Worlds Apart) ANNE LOUISE HASSING Release datum 4 AUGUSTUS 2011 DVD Release 5 JANUARI 2012 Awards/nominaties FILM FESTIVAL BERLIJN 2010 NOMINATIE GOUDEN BEER WINNAAR FIPRESCI PRIJS Kijkwijzer SYNOPSIS Ditte Rheinwald vertegenwoordigt de jongste generatie van de beroemde Deense bakkersfamilie. Haar eigen dromen en ambities zijn echter anders dan die van haar familie. Als ze een droombaan bij een galerie in New York krijgt aangeboden, besluit ze samen met haar vriend Peter de kans aan te grijpen. De toekomst lijkt stralend, het leven vrolijk en simpel. Maar dan wordt Ditte’s charismatische vader Rikard, meesterbakker en hofleverancier, ernstig ziek. Als Rikard eist dat zij de leiding overneemt van het familiebedrijf, raakt haar hele leven uit balans. Plotseling is het leven niet meer zo simpel. CAST Ditte Lene Maria Christensen Far Jesper Christensen Peter Pilou Asbæk Sanne Anne Louise Hassing Chrisser Line Kruse Line Coco Hjardemaal Vimmer Gustav Fischer Kjærulff CREW DIRECTOR Pernille Fischer Christensen SCREENWRITERS Kim Fupz Aakeson, Pernille Fischer Christensen D.O.P. Jakob Ihre EDITORS Janus Billeskov Jansen, Anne Østerud SOUND DESIGN Peter Schultz COMPOSER Sebastian Öberg SET DESIGN Rasmus Thjellesen COSTUME DESIGN Signe Sejlund MAKEUP DESIGN Anne-Cathrine Sauerberg CASTING Djamila Hansen A FAMILY – Pernille Fischer Christensen INTRODUCTION TO THE FILM With her third feature film, A Family, award-winning director Pernille Fischer Christensen has crafted a powerful family drama about the relationship between duty and freedom, responsibility and love. The young up-coming Lene Maria Christensen plays the part of Ditte, who represents the youngest generation of a famous family of bakers, but Ditte has dreams of her own that pull her in a different direction. She wants to travel the world and live life to the fullest and when she’s offered a dream job in New York she’s on the fast track to success. That is, until her father becomes critically ill and Ditte faces the choice between pursuing an adventure with her boyfriend or staying at home to pick up the pieces of her disintegrating family. Pernille Fischer Christensen has written the film’s screenplay in collaboration with Kim Fupz Aakeson. The two of them also wrote the screenplay for Pernille Fischer Christensen’s feature film debut, A Soap, which won the Silver Bear and the award for Best Feature Film Debut at the Berlin Film Festival, as well as the 2007 National Critics’ Award for Best Film. The world premiere of A Family will be at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival where it will be featured in this year’s Competition. The film is produced by the new producer duo Sisse Graum Jørgensen and Vinca Wiedemann - who as the first artistic director of New Danish Screen - was responsible for subsidizing Pernille Fischer Christensen’s debut film, A Soap. Sisse Graum Jørgensen’s main responsibilities are financing, organizing and PR, while Vinca Wiedemann holds the artistic reins by counseling the director on the development of the screenplay and the creative consequences of production decisions. DIRECTOR’S VISION We are all born into something that already is, a family. Circumstances, parents, siblings, love and demands, norms, manners, values, a language. We’re named. We’re somebody’s son or daughter. We belong somewhere. We receive it like a present, but it is also imposed upon us. A family is both privilege and duty; if we’re lucky, we can count on our family, but we can usually also count on it to expect something of us. We dream of the family as something steady and unchanging, but life itself is change. Sometimes we can control it: we can get married, get divorced, travel, stay at home, have kids or chose not to. At other times, the family changes before our very eyes. New members join, others pass away, sometimes those most loved and indispensable. We have to find ourselves in all of this, find out who we are and what to do with all that’s been granted us. We might be expected to honor our father and mother, but we’ll probably also tell them NO , disappoint them and reject them. And get ready to build a life that’s our own. Create our own family, bear new members into the life we have prepared for them... -Pernille Fischer Christensen A FAMILY – Pernille Fischer Christensen THE RHEINWALD FAMILY – A MODERN FAMILY FOR BETTER OR WORSE Interview with Pernille Fischer Christensen We live in a time where the old family structures have fallen apart and where family more often than not is a conglomerate of your, mine and our kids from different litters, different parents and different backgrounds. What actually constitutes a family today? That question is the thematic core of the drama in Pernille Fischer Christensen’s A Family, featured in The Competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. In 2006 Pernille Fischer Christensen’s A Soap won the Silver Bear – the Jury Grand Prix - as well as the award for Best Debut Film. Although A Family shares a specific brand of intensity with A Soap it originates from a completely different place. “This time I wanted to tell a story where I already was the specialist,” says Pernille Fischer Christensen, who initially drew much from her own experience of illness in the family. “Both my parents have been ill and the film originally sprung from a need to delve into my own memories and see what could grow from them,” she says. She stresses that the film is in not a direct account of her own story, but tells a story that all families have dealt with. “A story about the roles each of us play in our families, about the love and ability to lead our lives with which our parents have ushered us into adult life, and not least about how we choose to manage it,” as Pernille Fischer Christensen says. A Family is about the gallery owner Ditte (Lene Maria Christensen), who is headed for New York with her boyfriend Peter (Pilou Asbæk). She has been offered job the job of her dreams, the future is bright, and life is full of possibilities. But fate soon intervenes in the form of two decisive events: first she discovers that she’s pregnant and shortly after that her father (Jesper Christensen), the master baker and purveyor to the royal court, is seriously ill. The question of the true nature of identity becomes essential to Ditte. She has grown accustomed to a life with complete freedom of choice but now finds herself torn between wanting to take care of her family and her desire to pursue her own dreams with her boyfriend. Suddenly she is faced with some impossible choices and at the same time she becomes a target for her father’s rage and acrimony when his life’s work is put in jeopardy. What is more important to Ditte: carrying on the proud traditions of her family – or exploring new territory with her boyfriend? At the same time, A Family is also a portrait of the gulf between Ditte’s generation and that of her father, and not least the differences in their views on life. “Richard, the father, grew up within a tradition. Maybe he hasn’t really given much thought to what he wanted to do with his life. It was all decided for him. In Ditte’s case it is a conscious choice. Ditte’s generation – which is also my own generation – values freedom and the idea of shaping our own lives very, very highly. We have a hard time accepting limitations,” Pernille Fischer Christensen says and continues: “Ditte’s dilemma is the choice between opting out family or not, but over the course of the film she slowly realizes that the greatest love lies within the family.” The film presents a wistful glance at a childhood long lost with flickering bright pictures of summer in central Copenhagen, Danish strawberries and sun kissed children. “I’d like for the audience to write their own family history into the film. The childhood photos in the beginning of the film look like the ones which we all have in our family albums. I want to conjure up an atmosphere of childhood, to plug into a collective memory of family – so that the audience will hopefully feel present, both in the here and now, but also in their own backstory and childhood memories,” the director says. “I wanted to make a film that manages to be both bright and happy, but at the same time also shoulder deep in the darkest of elements. In my film life is full of sunshine in the streets, strawberry cake, physical closeness and possibilities – an open world ready to be conquered – right up until misfortune strikes. A FAMILY – Pernille Fischer Christensen Also, I’ve wanted to depict how life and love is perhaps most deeply felt when faced with the most severe sorrow.” Ditte comes from a family with proud traditions but at the same time she’s also a modern woman with contemporary dreams and hopes for her life – dreams that are dealt a blow by the dramatic events of the film. “Ditte is a person who over a short period of time encounters the fragile nature of life – both in relation to her own pregnancy and to her father’s illness, which remind her that life doesn’t last forever,” Pernille Fischer Christensen says and elaborates: “Our lives pose two basic existential conditions.

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