Discoveries from Denmark World Cinema

In a Copenhagen suburb the 19-year-old Per is found unconscious after having been badly beaten up. He is taken to hospital in a coma. The police have no clues, but the air is thick with suspicion. His mother struggles to maintain her faith in his survival. His younger sister, Mie, begins to pick up rumors. Her boyfriend, Shadi, suspects that his elder brother is behind the assault but he cannot tell anyone. Many well-meaning people find themselves at sea in a fable about emotions leading us astray.

Early morning. A young couple enters their apartment after locking themselves out. The home is completely empty and dark, and there is no sign of the family who had been their neighbors for years. The lights don't work, and when they finally manage to light a match, they see the body of the old girl slumped in an armchair.

The evil lawyer wants to take over the estate, and the evil farmer Esben helps him. But if the good farmer Svend Åge gets the red cow Rosa to bellow while Niels Peder yodels, then the horse that the stable boy Morten is riding on the trotting track will run faster and win the race. Then the lawyer will no longer be able to take over the estate, but it could all go down the drain if he steals Rosa.

Anders Refn's film adaptation of Gustav Wied's novel stars Jens Okking and Helle Hertz in the leading roles as Baron Helmuth and his wife Alvilda. The baron is deeply enamored with his wife, but she is repelled by his blunt and coarse nature and is drawn to her cousin, who fulfills her desire for passionate romance.

The four young Scandinavian women Helene, Marte, Pauline and Wilde are all fat, and they’re not ashamed of it. They are part of a growing fat-activism movement that supports fat women and fights for body positivity and inclusivity. The message is that you’re beautiful just as you are. The women connect and support one another at group activities and outings.

Danish melodrama about a housemaid struggling to find normalcy and love in the midst of war.

Directed by Danish filmmakers Bjarne and Astrid Henning-Jensen, THOSE BLASTED KIDS tells a story of a group of back-alley urchins that is considered Denmark’s first true children’s film.

In the wake of a series of seemingly insignificant events, an ordinary school day for Sara, Mikkel, Louise and Hassan develops into a tragic turning point that changes everything forever.

Bella's father died tragically, and now the teenage girl lives in close proximity to her mother, Maj. They protect each other from the outside world, so to speak, but one day the outside world knocks on their door. Maj meets a new man, and Bella becomes involved in helping a young Bosnian refugee obtain asylum. Has Maj let go of her daughter too soon? Is Bella capable of helping both herself and others?

When he learns that his Aunt Fatwa has received the honorary title, the Jewel of India, Iqbal sees an opportunity to get out of school and convinces his dad to take the whole family to India for the ceremony. But when an accident leads the principal to expel Iqbal from school, his dad refuses to take him, demanding that Iqbal take responsibility by finding a new school to enroll in. Iqbal calls his aunt and asks to be enrolled at an Indian school.

A 17-year-old boy is living on the fringe of a true perception of reality. Cars pursue him, while a world full of rules and systems asks for his attention. How can he concentrate on his preparations for his french exam when the stuffed animals in his room begin to interfere? And what about Irene who disturbs with her invitations?

Christina is living in a suburb to Copenhagen. With her class mates Cecilie, Trine and Pernille she slacks her school work, living mostly for the weekends of gate crashing, getting drunk, experimenting with drugs and scoring guys. But her world is turned upside down when Cecilie's boyfriend Shaid starts hitting on her, and Cecilie mistakenly believes the two of them are making out.

Based on the Armenian ‘Sharakan’, a nine-part song that brings us gradually closer to meaning, Maria Saakyan’s new film further develops the poetic invention apparent in her first feature, The Lighthouse. Focusing on the world of a 14-year-old girl, Evridika, who is experiencing the first extremes of adolescent emotion, it makes effective and imaginative use of her private world centred on internet chat rooms and mobile phone recordings.

An ancient Latvian folk tale is the basis for this colorful animated feature in the tradition of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. A vengeful sorceress casts a kingdom’s princess into a deep sleep at the top of an icy mountain, where she awaits release from the spell that will destroy the land. Of all the men vying for the honor, the shy outcast son of a family of thugs is the most unlikely. Director Kalnaellis brings a playful sense of humor to the characterizations and adds zippy contemporary elements including a chorus of wisecracking crows. (Gene Siskel Film Center)

Rosa is a lonely 13 year old wearing a leg prosthesis. She lives with her single father in a small town.

A couple and their young son leave their urban life in Copenhagen and move to an isolated forest in Sweden, hoping to reignite the spark in their relationship.

is a creative documentary-fiction film and a film that might expand your sense of reality. It is the story about a man who enters the virtual world Second Life to pursue his personal dreams and ambitions. His journey into cyberspace becomes a magic learning experience, which gradually opens the gates to a much larger reality.

Behind the red gates lies Dyrehaven with the green beeches and the famous zoo hill - the motley world of clowns. Professor Labardi is behind the popular singer pavilion, where his young daughter, Gulnare, performs. After a rainy summer, there is an economic low tide on Bakken, and the family is tempted to seek help from Gulnare's enterprising suitor, Carlo Petersen. But Professor Labardi carries a secret: the clown family has family ties to the fine legal world outside the gates. There is conflict, money transactions, love, hypocrisy and villainous streaks when the fine world and the hill folk meet. Behind the Red Gates is a terrific folk comedy that takes us behind the attractions at the traditional amusement park in Klampenborg.

Eleven-year old Rikke lives alone with her father, whose only interest in life seems to be the soccer matches which appear on his television. Not surprisingly, Rikke is somewhat bored. She enters a contest put on by a cereal company which has as its grand prize a horse. Since she lives in the city in a second floor apartment, it never occurred to her that she might win, but win she does. The horse ("Mama-Mia") duly appears, and she and the members of her slum neighborhood come together to cope with the situation in a delightful way.

In a futuristic world, a young girl gets a robot for her birthday, but as mischievous things start happening, she begins to ask questions.

Anna feels obliged to visit her childhood friend, Julie on the island of Møn, where Julie still lives with her mother, Sonja. The three women are taking in the sun at the beach, when clouds begin to gather.

Discarded by society, let down by their bank and evicted from their homes, three senior citizens plan a nice little bank robbery to set things right. But things don't go quite that easy...

Two teen boys meet each other in Copenhagen and team up to find one of the boys' mother. Instead they end up finding themselves - and each other.

Hanna lives in a New Age Christian community in rural Denmark and longs to have a child. But her sheltered life starts to unravel as the unexpected arrival of her younger brother Jakob stirs up long-buried memories of their troubled past. Will his arrival threaten Hanna’s dream of becoming a mother? And will the members of the community be able to live up to their own rules and beliefs, when they are confronted with the question: who gets to decide over love?

Filmmaker Johannes and his wife, schoolteacher Signe, experience the biggest sorrow and misfortune one can ever imagine. Nevertheless, in all the hopelessness they must try to reach for mutual and mature love in order to continue life after death.

Three out of work actors breaks into a bank through the toilet of a railroad station.

16-year-old Frida and Mona take the train from the suburbs to Copenhagen on a Friday night to get rid of their virginity. They make themselves up and change their clothes in the ladies' room at the Central Station and the manhunt in Copenhagen's night-life can begin.

On the night of 3 August 1996 a school of striped dolphins ran ashore near the village of Tuo on Ngasinue/Fenualoa Island in the Reef Islands (Solomon Islands). Dolphins have a special kinship-related link to the Aiwoo-speaking people in Tuo. Moffat Bonunga tells the legend or so-called local kastom story that explains why. Moffat's explanations are linked with those of another local expert, Commins Veio, who tells his version of the story to Nathaniel Meningi inside the men's house (sapolau) in Tuo. The night the dolphins run ashore, Moffat immediately contacts the film crew - the villagers want the crew to film this peculiar phenomenon. Although the film focuses on the kastom story and the villagers' re-enactment of the hunt, it also documents the villagers' joy that the sea once again has proved an important source of food.

One can't help wondering whether, some quarter-century ago, Carsten Brandt had the slightest inkling of the epic dimension the project he was then starting to conceive – The Gentle Pain – would take on in the subsequent decades. For it became epic in just about every sense of the word: the film is very long; it tells a multi-layered story characterised as much by its digressions as by its main narrative thread, which concerns a filmmaker’s attempts to make sense of the life of Thorkild Hansen, a Danish traveller/historian/writer internationally probably best known for his non-fiction novel Processen mod Hamsun (1978); and it took a long time to finish – and then sat on a shelf due to legal battles galore. What is now finally revealed is a monument of modern(ist) cinema: a work that as much charts one man’s journey into his soul as a voyage of discovery into another artist’s mind.

Adrian Hughes digs into his mother's dramatic life, from the jetset Copenhagen of the 1950's to loneliness and alcoholism, but a bitter farewell letter opens new wounds. In Jesper Dalgaard's staged documentary we encounter tragic female destinies, affluent and absent fathers, while actors such as Birthe Neumann, Asta August and Jakob Cedergren bring the past to life in this breathtaking experiment. With equal parts humour and pain, the film shows that it's never too late to try to understand your family.

After the elections in 1929, where the Social Democrats are ahead, the work of rebuilding Danish society begins in earnest. A bold young man with faith in life, himself and the labor movement returns to the country, as legislation creates the opportunity to live abroad, where he feels at home. Ten years of struggle for work and democratic rule are experienced through living people. Stauning speaks before and after the film.

A Chinese diplomat is kidnapped from a conference in Genève and the world peace is at risk. The trail leads to a hiding place in Denmark and the Danish secret service brings in their best agent, agent Smith, who has been in a psychiatric hospital since his last assignment. To accompany Smith they once again turn to novelty and party tricks salesman Frede Hansen, because they need an unrecognizable man to infiltrate the crime syndicate behind the kidnapping.

The world is ending, but the president of The Grand Turkish Republic won’t let that happen until he has a chicken schnitzel. Gleefully silly science fiction satire with political bite.

Shortly after the end of the war Göran is forced to take care of his somewhat delirious grandfather who manages to confuse a couple of letters resulting in a mess of things.

Camilla and Louise are digging in the desert sand of Israel. They are looking for relics of the past, but while doing so, self-deception and life-lies appear. This mars their conception of life and shakes their relationship.

Ten-year old Agathe-Christine, or simply AC, prefers to be on her own. AC fancy mysteries, and from the basement in the building, where she has just moved in, she has established a small detective bureau. AC´s first mystery appears to be simple to solve, but before long AC finds herself involved in a much more complicated affair, than she could have ever foreseen.

The Krunborg family has new problems: a freshly painted house that won't dry, a tent with holes and a car that won't go anywhere and much much more.

About the young Aarhus businessman Jacob Hansen who is going to a congress in Copenhagen. His competitor in the firm sends his secretary over to spy and bring Jacob into disrepute. The secretary has sympathy for Jacob, creating complications when his wife show up.

"Modern vaudeville," where the entire story takes place at Dyrehavsbakken. In an impressionistic style, it tells the story of the waiter Mowitz, who ponders whether he loves the singer Myrna and what true love really is. He ponders too long; Myrna instead becomes engaged to the pianist Bertram, who can get her into the Circus Revue. Mowitz also takes too long to discover the singer Lillian's interest, so his friend Max snatches her up instead, while Mowitz can continue his search for the one and only.

Kristian, who is a transvestite, still lives at home with his mother Emma, because she loves him just the way he is. Life as a transvestite offers many humiliations from the outside world, but with his mom, Kristian feels that he can be himself. Until one day when Emma meets the alcoholic Søren, who does not have the same tolerance...

Ten year old Benjamin and his mother live on an isolated farm under the violent reign of his father. Mother takes the beating and tries to cover up to keep things normal. But when Benjamin one day witnesses this beating, his suspicions are turned into facts. Benjamin wants his father to apologize to his mother for hitting her. Benjamin naively believes that things can be set straight with words alone. When Benjamin worsens the situation by taking his father's puppy as a hostage things escalate to a point where his mother has to step up and do what she should have done a long time ago.

Join us for a festive and spectacular revival of Lise Nørgaard's beloved TV series, which unfolds here in a new, lavish, and modern version. For two whole seasons, "Matador Musical" has played to sold-out houses at the Opera House in Copenhagen. In just a few hours, the 85,000 tickets were snapped up, and many were left disappointed. The audience was ecstatic—and the success was a sure thing! And there is really something to look forward to when Danish theater's "happy boy," director Peter Langdal, dazzles us with the familiar Matador universe in a new and modern production that spares no ambition: It doesn't get much more spectacular than this, when the dream team of actors, singers, and dancers are unleashed on the Opera's grand stage in a lively fireworks display, accompanied by Denmark's arguably best band, the Radio Entertainment Orchestra.

A poor dandy embezzled large sums of money and buys the title Marquis De Sade to impress the upper class. The film premiered as "I am a Marquis."

The film is about a man (played by Jens Jørn Spottag) who is involved in a series of trouble and sinking deeper every time he tried to cover up the previous problem.

A man grows up in very modest circumstances in the early years of the 20th century, but his diligence, intelligence and willingness to endure hardship helps him to become a leading brain surgeon. A success story on the face of it, but a story about a man – who is none other than the director's father – a man of powerful emotions. The film explores the nature and origin of the guilt that repeatedly deprived him of happiness.

Two smart city girls, Angelica (12) and Lone (9), are sent on summer vacation to stay with a couple of distant old relatives in an even more distant part of Jutland. The neighbors on the large pig farm are trying to get the two old people into a nursing home so they can take over the land. The girls don't like this, so they take up the fight to help their aging hosts.

Experimental short film by the Japanese director Nori Morita

With "The Normans," painters Paul Gernes and Per Kirkeby wanted to make a film about the Viking Age, but not a traditional fiction film set in that period. Instead, the film has a contemporary setting, in which a guide shows various historical sites and tries to bring the past to life, even though she has only one interested listener. Within this framework, episodes from Danish mythology are brought to life: King Skjold, Rolf Krake, Regnar Lodbrog, the Battle of Svold, etc. The film mainly follows the account in Saxo's chronicle, but also dramatizes a story by the Arab author Ibn Fadlan. He described the cremation of a Viking chieftain in Russia around the year 900, where, among other things, a slave woman was sacrificed after ritual intercourse. The film is based on a number of historical and archaeological studies. The loose form is intended to emphasize how fragmentary our knowledge of the Viking Age actually is.

At Santa Claus School, the principal has called a meeting. Lucia, her parents Julius and Claudia and everyone else at school are excited. But the tension is replaced by a shock when the headmaster cancels Christmas. He seems confused, and it soon becomes clear that he is trapped in a Christmas trauma from his younger days as Santa Claus. Lucia sets out to find out what has happened and with the help of the younger student Elias and a magical time machine, she travels back in time in the hope of saving Christmas.

Although the twins Flora and Dora attend the School of Sculpture, their real calling lies in gymnastics. They decide to open an “Institute of Strength and Beauty”, which does not go down well with Uncle Brown, who finances their numerous business adventures. When he announces his arrival in town and demands to see the results from the School of Sculpture, they find themselves in a predicament. (stumfilm.dk)

15-year-old Johan helps his 9-year-old brother, Oscar, to build a space rocket to go visit their dad. Johan has made up a story for Oscar, as to why their dad is no longer with them. But on the day that Oscar celebrates his 10th birthday, this lie turns into something unexpected. Will Johan tell Oscar the truth?

The Princess of Illyria rejects all suitors, but suddenly begins to take an interest in a wandering pauper roaming the vicinity of the royal castle. It is none other than the Prince of Denmark and his friend, Kasper Røghat. By means of a magic toy, rattle and copper kettle, the disguised prince manages to secure himself a kiss and a night in the princess’s chamber. Kasper Røghat makes sure that the king is informed of the ‘affair’, causing the princess to be thrown out of the kingdom. She accordingly has to set out for Denmark, heading for a life as the wife of a pauper. Will this fairy tale have a happy end? (stumfilm.dk)

In New Jersey, the Good Grief community focuses on a holistic way of dealing with grief, where children can give in to rage in ‘the volcano room,' and say goodbye to a dying teddy bear patient in ‘the hospital room.' Over the course of a year, we follow the weekly meetings and get close to Kimmy, Nicky, Peter, Nora, Nolan, and Mikayla and their close companion: grief. It is sometimes heartbreaking, but also humorous, to experience the questions about life and death through their open and curious minds. Grief is high and heavy as a mountain, but it helps you understand what has happened, and that death is irreversible.

Villa Orfeus is a peculiar old house that has become a treasure for the neighborhood's residents. It is a sanctuary where the house's residents are allowed to be different, to be themselves in an alienated world. Lydia Wiljengren (Ellen Gottschalch), the widow of a wealthy music dealer, owns Villa Orfeus. She has gradually squandered her entire fortune on her fondness for musical people. The only condition for living in the house is that they can either play an instrument or sing.

The normally so closely united family is having a crisis. Mie and Ole can no longer stand sharing a room, big sister Sis is tired of acting as the family's spare mother, and Father does not have the usual surplus to tackle Uncle Anders' peculiar behavior. Leaving Tiny Per, alone and sad about it all. Uncle Anders therefore enrolls the family to stay at a family therapy center, where they must live as Vikings for a week

The film depicts the last hours in the life of great Danish King Christian IV, told exclusively from a horse carriage. The focal point is Christian's tempestuous relationship to his second wife, Kirsten Munk, involving accusations of infidelity and attempted murder.