Discoveries from Denmark World Cinema

Tony, a visiting Italian, meets Oscar in a Copenhagen bar. What seems like a simple one-night stand becomes more complicated.

A thief poses as a detective.

Stylised, bloody and intimate tour of a young woman’s destructive thought patterns and a radical reconsidering of the idea of the suffering artist.

Throughout the 1970s, Sejr Volmer Sørensen enjoyed great success with the revues he staged every summer in Nykøbing Falster until 1978. It was in these performances that comedian Kai Løvring truly rose to fame. An edited version of the 1973 summer revue.

About the discovery of a mass grave with Polish officers in Katyn in Russia in 1943 and the identification of the skull that the Danish doctor Helge Tramsen took home

When Dennis, an introvert bodybuilder, invites a local girl out on a date his mother is hurt and disappointed. Despite the pressure she puts on him to cancel the date, Dennis ventures into a night that he will never forget.

The biggest up-and-coming talents on the Danish comedy scene compete to win the title of ZULU Comedian of the Year! The concept is simple: Simon Talbot, Torben Chris, Nikolaj Stokholm, and several others you know hook up with the new talents and decide what they should be funny about.

"Like" it or not, Facebook wants you to share everything, but how much information are they willing to share with you?

The idealistic Lærke is put to the test when she drags her boyfriend and child to her parents' St. Hans Eve party, because what should have been a cosy family moment soon turns into a psychological power struggle between two generations. When Lærke ends up being brought down by her own principles, she throws herself into a last childish attempt to take back control.

A contemporary offbeat portrayal of a mixed lot of provincial people before during and after a baptism, a funeral and a wedding ceremony. At the centre of theses events is a woman with unfulfilled ambitions, a questioning rebel of a boy and an unconventional minister. Although seen through the eyes of a boy, this is a film for adults, about adults.

Through an intense conversation with a boundary-pushing psychologist, the introverted Alexander confronts his traumas.

The young girl Zahra lives a double life with her Muslim family on one side and her Danish boyfriend on the other. When Zahra gets pregnant her cover is blown. Her father disowns her, and she is torn between her love and her family.

Two hunters set out on safari with their African guide. They observe zebras, an ostrich, and a hippopotamus, capture a monkey, and camp for the night. After a lion kills their goat and horse, they shoot it by the water’s edge and later kill a second. The animals are skinned, and the hunters relax with cigarettes beside their trophies. (Note: Produced by Nordisk Film in 1907, Løvejagten gained notoriety because founder Ole Olsen purchased lions from Copenhagen Zoo, released them on an island, and filmed their killing. Supplemented with zoo footage to simulate Africa, the film caused public outrage yet drew huge audiences, establishing Nordisk’s reputation worldwide.)

A psychological drama. The action takes place within a few hours in a woman's life. She is burdened by the decision whether she should leave husband and child in favor of an American she has fallen in love with.

The three friends, Marie, Berling, and Vanja, are back home. They’ve moved in together in a large, beautiful house with high ceilings and a weekly dinner club. Marie is getting used to life as a newly divorced woman, the new grandmother Vanja takes care of both child and grandchild, while Berling has been forced into retirement. But with their usual impressive energy, the three women — led by Berling — decide to create Funen’s biggest local food festival! A decision that doesn’t go unnoticed, either within or around their small household.

After a lifetime of caregiving, 81-year-old Birthe is separated from her daughter Karen, who has Downs Syndrome. Birthe is struggling with dementia and the municipality believes that she is no longer capable of taking care of Karen, who has the mental age of an 8-year-old. On the day of Karen’s departure, Birthe is in denial about her own abilities. Why shouldn’t she be able to take proper care of her daughter?

A lawyer has a wife and a mistress. He loves them both equally high and together, they're the perfect wife.

A man is fired from his office job and at the same time he has a suspicion that his wife is cheating on him. The movie follows the desperate and dramatic reactions that the man makes up in his mind.

An attempt to hack into the exploitative tech giant GOLIA has dire consequences for members of the hacker group Xtinct Bugs, Marcus and Ronja, in a near future where consumerism and climate crisis has left much of the world in ruins.

Sofus, a young terminally ill cancer patient is enrolled in a hospice feeling ready to die. Shortly after arriving, he meets Sarah a charming young hospice worker. Sarah's impulsiveness and interesting approach to life intrigues him. However, Sarah hides a dark past, her father died of cancer and never gave her the chance to say goodbye. Sarah and Sofus spends a day together and Sarah shows Sofus a glimpse of the life he has never lived. On what seems to be the peak of their happiness together Sofus relapses and has an epileptic seizure which causes Sarah to shut Sofus out of her life afraid of losing him as she lost her dad. Sofus comfort in dying is now replaced with a fear of missing out on the life that he never knew he missed. Sofus realizes than in order to regain comfort in his remaining days, he has to understand the life and youth he has never experienced and have Sarah forgive her dead farther in order to start a new life.

A stingy uncle is taught a lesson when he is tricked into adopting a grown man instead of a ten-year-old kid. When aspiring poet Karl King is engaged to ballerina Mimi, he falls into disfavour with his benefactor: his uncle. The uncle threatens to adopt an orphan boy as an heir instead. However, in a comic plot, King’s adult brother-in-law takes on the role of a ten-year-old adopted son and displays his most mischievous side! (Stumfilm.dk)

Jeppe Aakjær's heroic poem about Jens Langkniv becomes something more than the story of a robber in a small parish in Jutland.

Jacob Nossell (24) is intelligent, but hardly fits the picture of a dream child: he suffers from a paralysis of the brain, a congenital physical handicap. It affects not only his powers of speech, but also causes cramps and stiffness. When he speaks, his words cluster together, and when he walks it is with difficulty. With a normal intelligence in a weakened body Jacob is the embodiment of the problem ‘what is normality’: he is too much of an invalid to be fully accepted by society and too ordinary for him to be able to accept his own fate.

A story of a strong friendship between two men and their single life in Copenhagen in the nineties. The modern Don Juan, Pierre, and his good friend and contrast, the painter Søren. The two of them stick together when nothing works their way. A black comedy of love, eroticism, loneliness and fate.

A Danish short film by Lone Scherfig

The girl Eva's parents are too busy at their jobs in the airport to go on summer vacation with her, so she decides to go with her grandmother in the attempt to find Eva's grandfather Åge, who used to be a pilot.

One minute you're biting your nails at world events, and the next you're laughing in impotence. Michael Schøt has spent most of his stand-up career in the space between these two emotions. His ability to capture the zeitgeist here and now, but playfully observe it from the outside, has thrilled not only audiences, but also critics - who over the years have attached words like “one of the best stand-up comedians in Denmark”, “a comic elemental force”, ‘virtuoso’ and “the absolute sharpest and fastest satirist in the media” to him. Jubelpessimist is a show about an eternal optimist in a gloomy world. A shot of joy, warmth and laughter for the dark times.

A bunch of wagons are crossing the border. It's the Karla Circus, which, after a rough season in Germany, is gonna try its luck in Denmark. Mrs. Karla, the beloved and respected circus director, goes through passports and papers with the customs officers... everything's fine, so the circus caravan can keep going to the next town. One of the circus employees is caught harboring a vagrant in his wagon. But when it turns out that the vagrant is an excellent flute player, he becomes an asset to Circus Karla.

Defence attorney Jane Fisher-Byrialsen is determined to put an end to interrogation techniques that pressure innocent people into false confessions. The film follows four of her cases and examines the psychological aspect of how people end up confessing to crimes they have not committed and the consequences of these confessions – for those accused, for their families, and for society at large.

A group of better-off thirty-somethings meet for a weekend in Knud and Beth's home. The host couple is prone to bickering regularly. The married couples (Jan and Ilse, and Kjeld and Tove) that are visiting understand and try to stay out of the way. Bachelor Lars, however, comes into his own and is a constant source of provocative comments.

His girlfriend's death, sends young Benjamin on a downward spiral, only made worse by the emotionally unavailable men in his life.

Street views from the danish capital. Among the various retailers and businesses seen is Serpent Bicycle Shop, the newly built Hotel Cosmopolite, Hotel d'Angleterre, Bikubens Sparekasse, Østerbros Vinhandel, Hafnia Bicycles, Ferdinand Lørups Isenkram & Udstyr and Jens Karl Jensen's Cravats.

The young, hard-working, and extremely attractive Eva Brun works as secretary to Director Jansen. But when her boss becomes a little too fond of Eva's "work," she quits. Tired of men and tired of lecherous male bosses, she devises a cunning plan. She wants to get married and divorced as quickly as possible so she can live off alimony. And Eva chooses shipowner's son Hans P. Larsen as her victim. But Hans has his own agenda. And soon the two begin a cunning game, the outcome of which only Cupid's arrows know.

In August 2010, French filmmaker Vincent Moon and Efterklang's 8 piece-live band met up on an island off the Danish coast. The objective was to shoot a film. A film with the same length as an album, and a film full of performances, experiments and collaborations. 
Over an intense period of 4 days Efterklang collaborated with more than 200 local musicians, kids and their own parents, creating new performances and interpretations of songs from their album Magic Chairs (4AD, Rumraket 2010). It was all filmed by Vincent Moon who same time conducted several filmic and musical experiments with Efterklang as his dedicated playmates.

It's jokes, it's pure stand-up, and as usual, it's a bit too much. But is it okay to be a little slutty when you're a mother? If not, how do you control it? And does she mean it when she says she's not bitter about being a single mother?

2035. Europe is in ruins. Traditional warfare has collapsed. Drones fail. Autonomous weapons fall silent. In the wake of a war it cannot win, NATO authorizes the unthinkable-a covert black-ops experiment on Danish soil to create a living weapon: a genetically engineered predator built to hunt, adapt, and annihilate. The project is terminated. Erased. Forgotten. Until now.

Jan's only real friend is his blind father Mogens. When Jan's sister Lisbeth parks Mogens in a nursing home and Mogens apparently loses his will to live, Jan decides to give him something to live for: He stages a grand journey to China, in the middle of his two-room apartment in a desolate ghetto. China, a mythical land where Mogens once met the love of his life, Jans mother. But amidst the growing troubles of keeping the charade going, Jan meets a woman too.

One evening, the cable TV connection disappears in an apartment building. The residents are told that they can no longer watch cable TV. This leads to an unprecedented sense of unity among the residents. They decide to form an antenna association, with media expert Per as chairman. As Per gets closer to Kim, he tells her that he is actually an antenna installer. When Per soon finds out that she is a nude model, he is not only thrown out of her life, but she also begins to speak negatively about him. The antenna association reaches a preliminary climax when the building's oldest resident falls from the roof.

Ole Eriksen is a young engineer with lots of good ideas and a lot of courage. That's why it's all the more frustrating that his immediate boss doesn't care about innovation or progress, and that the CEO is more interested in women than business. In the end, Ole can't take it anymore and quits, thereby arousing his sweet wife's concerns. But Ole has a plan...

A man has been in prison for sixteen years after killing of his wife. Now he seeks to create a new life, where he only finds warmth and fellowship with Turkish immigrants. He will also try to come to terms with the daughter who hates him. Denmark's submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1986.

In a large fish export company, the general manager's talented son Hugo holds a trusted position. When one day 500 kroner is missing from the cash register, speculation begins about who the culprit might be. Greengrocer Olsen is a happy man, completely satisfied with the lot he has been allotted in life. When he is drawn as a juror in the case against the general manager of the fish export company, he is beside himself: he has no idea. But who is the culprit anyway?

Mixes fiction and documentary to tell the story of Marc Helt and his first sexual experience with other men, as a healing ritual after a violent hate crime.

A talentless artist with a greatly inflated ego, Carlo Morton, has enchanted the naïve Helga with tales from Italy. Yearning to see the world, Helga decides to run away from home, following her pompous friend to warmer climes. Morton suddenly has his hands full trying to hide his Italian mistress away. At the same time, the stalwart train engineer Helder, who also has tender feelings for Helga, has followed her to Italy in order to reveal the true nature of the disagreeable artist and bring Helga home. (stumfilm.dk)

Donna wants to live the perfect Free Woman life. At the same time she needs the daily comfort of a close relationship to her girl-friend Britt. Britt is romantically inclined in an old-fashioned way and would rather opt for life with a wrong man than with no man at all.

Mogens Wieth is a songwriter who lives beyond his means. He is expecting to inherit a fortune from his Aunt Tut in Paris, who is old and filthy rich. He has been corresponding with her for many years. In reality, Aunt Tut is dead, and it is her daughter who writes the letters. A young singer who wants to ingratiate himself with the songwriter claims that he knows the aunt and that she is coming to Copenhagen. He has persuaded an older actress to play the role of Aunt Tut. Unfortunately, the aunt's charming daughter also arrives in Copenhagen at the same time, setting the stage for costly episodes and amusing complications...

The story of a family gathered in a silent chapel, where tense feelings of regret, anger and old wounds come to surface. Grief pulls them apart, but it might also, unexpectedly, be the one thing that can bring them closer.

Stine tries to figure out her feelings for Jens, Michael, and Søren. She is most in love with Jens. However, Jens is always so serious and only thinks about school. Stine and Jens move in together, but this does not solve any of their problems. When Jens does not come home one evening without letting her know, Stine moves in with Anders. However, she misses Jens.

Mrs Balle catches her husband with another woman, but he promptly explains that the woman is his sister-in-law from America. Further complications ensue. (stumfilm.dk)

Johnny and Muhammed grow up as friends in the Danish concrete ghetto, where life is harsh and filled with violence and drugs. While Johnny has given up hope for a better life, Muhammed is determined to fight for a better future. But Muhammed must battle against prejudice from both society and his own community, making it an uphill struggle.