IN SEARCH OF A STORY into THE battlefield AN UNFAMILIAR FRIENDSHIP Camera d’Or winner Christoffer Boe is returning to Combining the keen eye of an anthropologist with the A 2009 Cannes competitor, Daniel Joseph Borgman Cannes in Directors’ Fortnight with Everything Will skill of a storyteller, Janus Metz’ Armadillo takes us to is participating yet again with a short film. Selected for Be Fine, a vertiginous ride following a film director’s the front lines in the Afghan Helmand province among a Critics’ Week is Berik, a universal narrative about finding attempts to uncover a terrifying conspiracy. platoon of Danish soldiers. Selected for Critics’ Week. true friendship set in a remote region in Kazakhstan. PAGE 3 PAGE 6 PAGE 10 FILM IS PUBLISHED BY# THE DANISH69 FILM INSTITUTE / may 2010 EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE / DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT ARMADILLO / CRITICS’ WEEK BERIK / CRITICS’ WEEK PAGE 2 / FILM#69 / CANNES ISSUE FILM#69/ CANNES ISSuE INSIDE IN SEARCH OF A STORY INTO THE BATTLEFIELD AN UNFAMILIAR FRIENDSHIP THE JOYS OF RETELLING / DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT Camera d’Or winner Christoffer Boe is returning to Combining the keen eye of an anthropologist with the A 2009 Cannes competitor, Daniel Joseph Borgman Cannes in Directors’ Fortnight with Everything Will skill of a storyteller, Janus Metz’ Armadillo takes us to is participating yet again with a short film. Selected for Be Fine, a vertiginous ride following a film director’s the front lines in the Afghan Helmand province among a Critics’ Week is Berik, a universal narrative about finding attempts to uncover a terrifying conspiracy. platoon of Danish soldiers. Selected for Critics’ Week. true friendship set in a remote region in Kazakhstan. FILM set out to find the meta-layers and genre experiments in Everything Will Be PAGE 3 PAGE 6 PAGE 10 Fine, when all Christoffer Boe really wanted with his film was to tell an entertain- ing story. Interview in three takes with Boe and lead Jens Albinus. PAGE 03 FILM IS PUBLISHED BY# THE DANISH69 FILM INSTITUTE / MAY 2010 BETWEEN HEROES AND kILLERS / CRITICS’ WEEk Janus Metz spent six months embedded on the front lines in Afghanistan’s Hel mand province. Armadillo is the first Danish documentary to take the audience into the battlefield and look the realities of war straight in the eye. PAGE 06 Everything Will Be Fine Photo: Max Stirner WHEN FRIENDSHIP COMES kNOCkING / CRITICS’ WEEk While preparing his first feature under the Cinéfondation Residence programme in Paris, Daniel Joseph Borgman is showcasing his short film Berik in Cannes, a story set in a former Soviet nuclear testing station. PAGE 10 EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE / DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT BACk TO BASICS ARMADILLO / CRITICS’ WEEK BERIK / CRITICS’ WEEK A new Danish Film Policy Accord is underway. Henrik Bo Nielsen, CEO of the Danish Film Institute, draws up the hot spots of the coming talks. PAGE 12 Armadillo Photo: Lars Skree ART MEETING THE MARkET / PRODUCER ON THE MOvE FILM#69 / CANNES Defining a clear vision is key to all good film producing according to Christian May 2010 Rank, Danish Producer on the Move. PAGE 13 PUBLISHED BY Danish Film Institute EDITOR Susanna Neimann QUOTAS ARE FOR FISH EDITORIAL TEAM Vicki Marie Synnott, Danish women directors are doing exceptionally well right now. But is gender Anders Budtz-Jørgensen, Annemarie Hørsman really still an issue? PAGE 14 TRANSLATIONS Glen Garner DESIGN Rasmus Koch Studio AD Morten C. Bak TENDERNESS FOR THE CHARACTERS TYPE Cendia, Millton, Akzidenz-Grotesk Berik. Framegrab There is always a story behind the story, when Lone Scherfig creates her PAPER Munken Lynx 100 g characters. Jenny’s mother in An Education is no exception. PAGE 16 PRINTED BY Schultz Grafisk CIRCULATION 5,000 ISSN 1399-2813 (print version) 2 X FEATURE FILM DEBUTS ISSN 1903-7511 (online version) FILM presents Mikkel Munch-Fals’ ensemble drama Nothing’s All Bad and Brazilian COvER Christoffer Boe, director of Everything Will Be PAGE 18 Fine. Photo by Helene Hasen and Paul Wilson expatriate Carlos Oliveira’s cross-cultural realism in Rosa Morena. FILM is the Danish Film Institute’S MAkE IT AGAIN, SAM international festival magazine Jim Sheridan’s Brothers is one of recent years’ Hollywood remakes of Danish titles. Issued prior to the three major festivals in Berlin, How do the filmmakers relate to US versions of their films? PAGE 22 Cannes and Amsterdam, the magazine brings articles, essays and interviews presenting the Lone Scherfig Photo: Jan Buus films in competition, Danish films in progress, GROWTH SPURT / ANIMATION SPECIAL young talents and news stories. The Danish animation industry is in a growth spurt. The key to the success seems The catalogue in the reverse section gives a full to lie in a huge talent pool and more accessible technology. PAGE 24 view of all current Danish feature films – either in release or in the pipeline – and a selection of short films and documentaries. See more at TEAMING UP WITH BEIJING / ANIMATION SPECIAL dfi.dk/English/FILM-Magazine Producer Nina Crone is making Freddy Frogface in partnership with animation studios in Beijing. PAGE 26 The Danish Film Institute is the national agency responsible for supporting and encouraging film and cinema culture. Operations extend from NO MONkEY BUSINESS / ANIMATION SPECIAL participation in the development and production Freddy Frogface Photo: Crone Film Jan Rahbek’s love of kitschy B-movies spawned the idea for Carlo’s Casino, a of feature films, shorts and documentaries, over distribution and marketing, to managing the 3D-animated musical action-comedy. PAGE 27 national film archive and the Cinematheque. WAS DREYER A SADIST? DANISH FILM INSTITUTE On 25 May the Danish Film Institute launches a new website on the GotherSGADE 55 PAGE 28 DK-1123 COpEnHAGEn K great Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer. T +45 3374 3400 [email protected] FILM NEWS Ole Christian Madsen, Rune Schjøtt, Kasper Holten, Sound of Noise, Jeanne d’Arc dfi.Dk/english dfi.Dk/English/FILM-Magazine score by Portishead/Goldfrapp, High Five cinema distribution. PAGE 31 Carl Theodor Dreyer Photo: DFI EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE / BOE & ALBINUS / DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT / FILM#69 / PAGE 3 THE JOYS OF RETELLING ROUGH CUTS. A film set is a battlefield of sorts. Luckily it rarely amounts to more than the occasional cut to the forehead. Boe and Albinus on the set of Everything Will Be Fine Photo: Max Stirner Who really directed Christoffer Boe’s fourth feature Everything losing himself in a web of fiction, conspiracy and personal tragedy. Will Be Fine, screening in Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes? It took Considering the metafictional plot, it seems obvious, and not least extremely more than one take as Lasse kyed Rasmussen, Boe’s PA on the Boe-sian, to stage the interview as a conversation between the two directors, Boe and shoot a year back, met with the director and his lead actor Jens his creation Falk, reflecting the confusion about when Boe’s film ends and Falk’s film Albinus to try and find out. takes over. Who really directed Everything Will Be Fine? Having settled on this angle, I confidently ring the doorbell to Boe’s office, BY LASSE kYED RASMUSSEN attractively located in a patrician apartment in central Copenhagen. TAkE #1 THE FALSE ENDING One afternoon in March I’m strolling through a sunny Copenhagen to meet Twenty-four hours later the sun and my faith in my clever angle are both gone. Christoffer Boe and Jens Albinus for a talk about the meta-layers in Everything Instead I’m left staring at a transcription of the interview that makes it painfully Will Be Fine, convinced that I’ve come up with a sufficiently sophisticated angle clear that Boe’s laconic, laid-back answer to my cryptic question of who is to encapsulate the film’s thematics and construction. But I’m nervous, too. Boe behind the film has blown my premise out of the water: can be quite unapproachable. “Everything Will Be Fine is directed by a team which calls itself Hr. Boe & Co. In recent years, Boe has made his mark in the European film landscape as an That’s pretty obvious. Who else could it have been?” elitist and contrary director, insistently crafting tales that play out in the space Hr. Boe & Co is a team Boe has surrounded himself with since his film-school between human pain and literary construction. His new film, Everything Will Be days. Together they are behind all four of his features, Everything Will Be Fine Fine, is full of big emotions and ingenious constructions, too. Jens Albinus stars being the latest. Alas, I was angling for a dead-end story, and perhaps the article as Jacob Falk, a director struggling to make his next feature come together but should end here. PAGE 4 / FILM#69 / EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE / BOE & ALBINUS / DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT FINDING THE RIGHT STORY Albinus hasn’t showed up yet, so Boe offers me a cup of coffee from a French Yet, as I read the transcription looking for another story, I discover my resemblance press coffeepot and we spend the waiting time swapping experiences about how to the director Jacob Falk. Falk, too, has a hard time finding the right story. to avoid invoking the curse of the French press – maladroit handling can summon “Specifically, Falk does not know what story to tell. All he knows is that he’ll a geyser of scalding brew from the glass cylinder. Together we manage to pour be making a film about a war. But the great unanswered question for him is the coffee without incurring burns and, as I sip it, I realise that Boe actually is not understanding why he has a need to tell that story,” Boe says.