Discoveries from Denmark World Cinema

Michael Schøt takes his razor-sharp political satire and pointed punchlines out onto the Danish country roads, where he asks the question: Democracy or Demoncracy?

Mikkel Rask has gathered his best material ever in a show that pays homage to the classic stand-up style: No long stories or gimmicks, just sharp, fast-paced jokes. The show touches on the current situation of course, but is also the perfect break from it - high-quality stand-up with original ideas. The show has a taste of comedy's roots in clubs, which is why he is proud to do the show at Comedy Zoo, the crowned home of Danish stand-up. A place that means a lot to him and all other comedians.

Harris lives in Manhattan. He is working in the real estate business, trying to recover from the love he just lost and struggling to move closer to becoming the stage performer he wants to be. The film moves intensely between something very fictitious and something very real.

Amanda is taking a job as some woman's daughter, but how far is she willing to go?

Follows homeless, addicted and alienated Greenlandic women in Copenhagen, Denmark; includes fragments of Greenlandic culture.

Edgar the rich man’s son meets Ebba the waitress, and sparks fly. Ebba quickly becomes pregnant, but when the young lovers want to marry, Edgar’s father will stop at nothing to quash the mismatch. (stumfilm.dk)

Quark the troll meets an ugly frog, a narcissistic prince and a desperate princess.

Description of Irene, a modern, free-spirited girl with a good job as press secretary for a film company. Nevertheless, she finds it difficult to get a grip on her life. She has grown distant from her husband, but for her daughter's sake she does not want to divorce him. Her lover Ebbe, a controversial journalist, is closer to her, but his violent infatuation can also be too much of a good thing. In a series of casual erotic relationships, Irene does not find what she is looking for either.

In the lead-up to Christmas 1974, an army of about seventy Santa Clauses, male and female, paraded through the city of Copenhagen, singing carols, handing out sweets and hot chocolate, and asking everyone what they wanted for Christmas. After spending a few days cementing the good image of Santa Claus, their generosity became increasingly radical. Among other things, the Santas climbed a barbed wire fence surrounding the recently shutte red General Motors assembly plant with the purpose of giving jobs back to “their rightful owners.” The week-long performance reached its crescendo inside one of Copenhagen’s biggest department stores when the Santas started handing out presents to customers directly off the shelves. The performance exposed the radical implications of the myth of Santa Claus’ boundless generosity, demonstrating that true generosity is impossible within the narrow terms of capitalist society.

A journalistic true-crime scam-thriller where ‘everyone is trying to deceive everyone’, featuring Russian online investment fraud, trade craft, crypto-hunters, serial swindlers and an insider from the Russian underworld.

Morten is one of the medieval image makers, who here experiences one of his figures coming to life. It is the Devil himself who steps down from the wall and attacks him.

Three suitors swarm the singer Adelaide, two of which own millions, while the last one owns naught but wit. Miss Adelaide is offered a lucrative tour in America, but her contract already binds her to Europe. Only a hypothetical husband could cancel the Europe tour. Together with her suitors, Adelaide devises a plan – a marriage with an eight-day trial period with a handsome dowry! But neither millionaire will let the other one marry her. They both turn to the third man, Robert, whom they consider harmless. After the trial period, it turns out that no money will sway Robert’s love. (Stumfilm.dk)

Welcome to the disappearing little world of Anders Grau. There are limits to how much can happen when any thought or event can grow to fill your entire head. But in the tiny stories there are huge adventures hiding.

An ordinary day turns into something completely unexpected when a young mother makes a lethal decision. Now it is up to coincidences what happens next. Shot in a one-take.

The film is the second 1910 film adaptation of Heiberg’s classic about foundling children, superstitions and star-crossed lovers. Near Elves’ Hill (Elverhøjen) lives Karen, a superstitious farmer’s wife, with her daughter Agnete. Agnete and the noble Sir Ebbesen are very much in love, but to their great sorrow Ebbesen is betrothed to the noble-born Elisabeth Munk. But not everything is as it seems. For Karen is not Agnete’s real mother: she found the baby girl on Elves’ Hill the very same night that the infant Elisabeth Munk, goddaughter of King Christian IV, disappeared from her parents’ home. When King Christian arrives in the area where his goddaughter’s wedding is to take place, he becomes something of a detective and sets out to untangle the entire mystery. (stumfilm.dk)

TV adaptation of Holberg's popular 1724 confusion comedy: Henrik (Paul Hagen) and Pernille (Birgitte Reimer) are two servants working for their respective lordships and they each independently fall for the temptation to put on the clothes of their lordships and pretend to be someone other than who they are. Unfortunately, the two meet each other in their new disguises - and fall in love.

Three lonely souls endure horrific experiences in three independent, hair-raising Copenhagen stories.

A documentary about private mercenary military forces and where their soldiers come from.

Radiohead performs at Denmark's NorthSide Festival on June 11, 2017.

Three men and their life-long attempts to reconcile the opposing cultural ties within them. The story unfolds in the tension between Robert E. Peary, the American who spent 23 years among the polar Eskimos in order to conquer the North Pole, and Minik, the sole survivor out of six Eskimos, who were put on the New York exhibition in 1897 by Peary. In the film's contemporary scenes, the young polar Eskimo Robert E. Peary II, a great-grandchild of the Arctic explorer, goes on an expedition into his ancestors' past, which takes him from Greenland to America. It changes Robert's view on himself and his family history forever.

John & Aage's second live comedy show from their 1993 tour.

Comedy Aid 2011

The daily habits of Kim from the hotdog-stand collapses when a gangster forces Kim to take care of a fish. This leads to a series of dangerous situations where Kim must find creative ways to save the fish - and himself.

The ancient knowledge of indigenous peoples challenges high-tech science in a near-cosmic tale from a South African desert where the world’s largest radio telescope is being built with antennae aimed at the far corners of the universe.

In icy mid-winter Toronto, a group of pregnant women desperately strive to regain control of their lives. They have insurmountable forces against them: homelessness, drug addiction, violent relationships. But following these particular individuals are the attentive eyes of their guardian angels, the social workers of a unique public health initiative. If these expectant mothers can only manage to break free of the vicious cycles dogging their steps, they have a chance to keep their newborns.

The small, diligent chorus girl Dolly Hansen is engaged at one of the city's big revue theaters, and one evening she has to step in and double for the prima donna who has called in sick. She is successful, and this gives her the courage to ask the director for a small salary increase. However, this is taken very unkindly, and such a heated discussion arises between them that the young girl suddenly finds herself in the street, fired on grey paper. But Dolly is not the type to give up. Untraditional self-centeredness soon creates a lot of attention around her.

1912 film by August Blom.

The young Julia – the priest's daughter – falls in love with the beautiful Barbara, who just moved to the island. A story about forbidden love and the hard choices it leads to.

A portrait for the condition of a gay teenager, rejected by family and relying on friends.

Out for a stroll, the short-sighted governess is more absorbed in her paper than in governing, leading to a series of unfortunate events, not least returning home with a boy instead of the daughter of the house. (stumfilm.dk)

Two Chinese horror aficionados, meet in a cult video store to watch the mysterious vampire film called "The curse of the velvet vampire". The film tells the story, of a metal band called 802 and a lot of beautiful vampire girls. However, the film is not to everyone's taste, and slowly the reality of the film and the world of the two Chinese begin to merge. Something terrifying has been brought back to life and now, only fear and death await them.

A young girl runs away from home upon learning a terrible truth

Three girlfriends renegotiate their friendship in a colour-flickering and endlessly long party bus in a triangle drama about the light at the end of the tunnel.

Daniel boxes at the sport's center, but deep inside he dreams of dancing rumba, wearing spandex, and inviting Elizabeth out. However, he does not dare because of his macho friends, who bully everyone, they feel are weak. He is therefore challenged when he is confronted with Elizabeth's friend, Michele, who is not afraid to be himself and connect to his feminine side.

The land of Klynk is home to the piverter, small, droopy-eyed creatures who are always sad and dissatisfied. Although the land is a paradise, they are able to export their tears. The heir to the throne, Prince Piwi, has obtained some magazines from the Land of Humans and reads extensively about happiness. He decides to travel to the Land of Humans himself and bring back Happiness. However, the people he meets have very different ideas about what Happiness actually is. There are also a number of clever businesspeople who want to exploit Prince Piwi commercially, and soon gangsters and secret agents arrive too.

16-year-old Kian realises that he has sold drugs to the wrong people. The responsibility for the failed deal rests squarely on his shoulders. But there is an easy fix: he just needs to get on the train from Aarhus to Copenhagen and do a small job that will make everything all right. He does not yet know how, but in the course of the next 24 hours, it dawns on him. Kian must commit a brutal murder of a man targeted by his support base. If he refuses, not only himself but also his family will be in danger.

People in their eighties and nineties, and even some centenarians, talk candidly and eloquently about love, loneliness, grief, life and death. A poetic, tender group portrait of a Danish generation slowly saying goodbye.

21-year-old Kathrine is on sabbatical. At her sister's graduation party, she is constantly confronted with questions about her future plans.

Alfred and Oscar fight in their fantasy universe to save the world from all kinds of supervillains. But when Oscar is diagnosed with cancer, their lives are turned upside down. They now face a greater villain than they could ever have imagined.

The author Morten Korch (1876-1954) shows around home at Bro Skovgård. He arrives with the 'red horses', walks with his wife and reads aloud to the grandchildren. On the audio side he quotes his original poems and tells a story of sounding Funen from the publication "Godtfolk".

Staffan returns to Svalöv, his childhood town. The visit becomes an odyssey of his memories with his friends Maria and Janne when they grew up in the 1940s. They spent their childhood reading about Indians, building a time machine with the crazy inventor Jöns and they learned how to kiss.

Princess Lola has been exiled from her native Pelicania after one of her relatives usurped the throne. She is now the celebrated prima donna of the Revue Theatre, arousing rapturous applause from audiences night after night. However, the princess has her most devoted admirers behind the scenes. The young theatre doctor Ove Helmer loves her, and our two old friends, Pat and Patachon – one now a prompter at the theatre, the other a make-up artist – regard her with the warmest affection. When the princess finally gets the opportunity to return to her native Pelicania, Pat and Patachon are eager to come along to help her assert her position. As things progress, Patachon's striking resemblance to the country’s king has unexpected consequences. (stumfilm.dk)

A ravaging epidemic is fast approaching the world city of Atlantica. In his laboratory, the famous doctor Harold Lister works like a maniac on a serum to counteract the deadly plague. His colleague and competitor Whistler labels Lister’s efforts as pure fantasies and even plants seeds of doubt in the mind of Lister’s fiancée, Julia, the daughter of a millionaire. When the plague comes to town carried by a poor woman, Annie Rawlins, Whistler’s claims are put to shame: the serum works. But while Lister works tirelessly to stop the infection in the city, the jealous Whistler breaks into the laboratory and substitutes the serum for a fake. Soon the citizens of Atlantica believe their medical hero to be a fraud. (Stumfilm.dk)

In the late afternoon, a young girl sits by herself, waiting to be picked up as the last child. At home, an unsettling reality awaits marked by her father’s increasing stress. Longing for her father’s warmth and support, she is overshadowed by his burdens, as the house starts to leak.