At the Film Market during the Cannes International Film Festival, Denmark’s leading international sales agency, TrustNordisk, has signed a contract for the US distribution of Danish director Lars von Trier’s upcoming thriller The House that Jack Built with New York-based IFC Films. The deal was negotiated by TrustNordisk director of sales and marketing Susan Wendt and IFC’s Arianna Bocco.

“Von Trier is an unparalleled cinematic provocateur and one of the world's great auteurs, and we are betting that audiences will see a Matt Dillon they have never dreamed of before,” said Jonathan Sehring and Lisa Schwartz, co-presidents of sister companies IFC Films and Sundance Selects. IFC also released von Trier’s Antichrist [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Lars von Trier
scheda film] (2009) in the USA.

Dillon plays the lead, flanked by an international cast consisting of Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman, Riley Keough, Siobhan Fallon Hogan and Sofie Gråbøl, in the “dark and sinister story, yet presented through a philosophical and occasionally humorous tale”. Shot in Copenhagen and Trollhättan, Sweden, it follows 12 years of Jack’s development as a serial killer – he views each murder as a work of art, and despite the fact that the police are closing in, he is set on taking greater and greater chances.

The House that Jack Built, which will be world-premiered next year, is being produced on an €8.8 million budget by Louise Vesth for Denmark’s Zentropa Group, with Swedish regional film centre Film i Väst, the Copenhagen Film Fund and France’s Slot Machine, in cooperation with Danish and Swedish pubcasters DR and SVT, Nordisk Film Distribution (which also has the Nordic distribution rights), Germany’s Concorde, and France’s Potemkine and Les Films du Losange.

TrustNordisk started pre-sales for the film at the Berlinale and has so far covered the UK and Ireland (with Curzon Artificial Eye), Germany and Austria (Telemünchen), France (Les Films du Losange), Latin America (California Filmes), Benelux (September Film), Greece (Seven Films), Portugal (Leopardo Filmes), Israel (Shani Film), the Middle East (Falcon Films), China (DD Dream), Hong Kong (Sundream), South Korea (Atnine Film), Russia/CIS (Russian World Vision), Poland (Gutek), Hungary (Vertigo Media), Taiwan (Moviecloud), the former Yugoslavia (Cinemania Group), the Czech Republic (Aerofilms), Bulgaria (Euro Films), Romania (Independenta Film 97) and the Baltic states (Estin Film).

At Cannes, the Danish sales agent has also licensed Danish director Jens Dahl’s feature debut, 3 Things [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], for worldwide distribution to Brazil’s California Filmes, for which vice-president Claiton Fernandes signed the deal with TrustNordisk’s senior sales manager, Nicolai Korsgaard. After several television series, Dahl – who also co-scripted Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher (1996) – penned the story of an explosives expert who takes part in an €8 million robbery, reports the crime to the police and enters a witness-protection programme. While waiting to appear in court, the lead character (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) stays in a hotel, is served butter chicken from his favourite restaurant, and demands that his ex-girlfriend (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) be brought to him in the Caroline Schlüter Bingestam and Jacob Jarek production for Profile Pictures (co-produced by this year’s Danish Producer on the Move at Cannes, Ditte Milsted), in conjunction with Danish commercial broadcaster TV2. 3 Things was released domestically last week (18 May) by Scanbox Entertainment, which is also in charge of the Scandinavian distribution.