07/03/2012 - Danish director Anne Grethe Riis’s World War II epic takes 45% of the weekend’s turnover in local cinemas, in the best domestic opening since 2010

Danish actress-writer-director Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis’s feature debut, The Village - One Family's Sacrifice Will Let a Country Live (The Hvidsten Group) [+see also:
trailer
interview: Anne Grethe Bjarup Riis
film profile] - depicting patriotic resistance in the Danish province during World War II – made the best opening of a local film in Denmark since the comedy blockbuster Clown: The Movie [+see also:
trailer
film profile] in 2010.

During the weekend, the €3.2 million Regner Grasten production accounted for 45% of all box-office generated in Danish cinemas; including previews, the film sold 100,947 tickets, 60% of them in Jutland, according to Grasten and, in the town of Randers, close to Hvidsten where it all happened, it enjoyed daily audiences of 1,200.

”I have never seen anything like this before – I did not think it would break during its opening weekend, I mean it does not have Mads Mikkelsen in the starring role, and there is not that much action,” Grasten told local film magazine Ekko. He originally hoped to reach 250,000 admissions to cover costs, now he has re-adjusted his estimate to 350,000.

With Lars von Trier collaborator Anders Refn as technical director and editor, the film was scripted by Ib Kastrup, Jørgen Kastrup and Torvald Lervad and stars Jens Jørn Spottag, Bodil Jørgensen, Bjarne Henriksen, Anne Louise Hassing, Jesper Asholt and Mads Wille.

“As a first-time director it is hard to believe that so many Danes have liked my film; people send me mails thanking me, it goes straight to the heart, I couldn’t be happier,” said Riis in a press release. Local distributor UIP had launched The Village - One Family's Sacrifice Will Let a Country Live on 110 screens.

The Hvidsten Group was instigated in March 1943, when the owner of the Hvidsten Inn, Marius Fiil, his wife and cook, Gudrun, and family and neighbours organised to receive weapons and explosives dropped by the Royal Air Force which the resistance used in their fight against the occupying German military.

The operation lasted for a year. After a captured British paratrooper, under torture, had disclosed the identities of the group members, most of them were arrested by the Gestapo. On June 26, 1944, Fiil, his son and son-in-law, with five others, were sentenced to death; his two daughters were sent to prison, one for life.