Eurimages backs Poppe's A Thousand Times Good Night, also joining Fly's Monica Z

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

16/03/2012 - Norwegian director Erik Poppe's A Thousand Times Good Night and Danish director Per Fly's Monica Z will be backed by Eurimages - the European Council's co-production fund - which has shelled out €550,000 and €370,000 financing respectively for the two features, which will both shoot this year.

For A Thousand Times Good Night Poppe, whose most recent feature Troubled Water [trailer] (2008) concluded his Oslo trilogy, has been inspired by his own experiences as a war photographer in the 1980s - with a woman lead character in the film, Rebekka, who is torn between the job that is her vocation and the family she loves so much.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Shot by Norwegian cinematographer John Christian Rosenlund, the first feature in the Poppe package with producer Finn Gjerdrum of Paradox Spillefilm, which the Norwegian Film Institute supported in 2010, will be produced with Ireland's Newgrange Pictures Ltd and Zentropa Sweden/Trollhättan Film

. A €4.2 million biopic of Swedish singer-actress Monica Zetterlund, who died in 2005, Monica Z is scripted by Swedish writer Peter Birro to star Swedish-Icelandic singer Edda Magnusson, who has compared Zetterlund to "meatballs and Pippi Longstocking- a part of the Swedish national soul, a symbol of nostalgic Sweden".

It will be the first Swedish film for Fly (pictured), whose latest direction was The Woman Who Dreamed of a Man [trailer] (2010). Swedish producer Lena Rehnberg and her StellaNova Film will produce with Swedish public broadcaster SVT, regional film centre Film i Väst and Eyeworks Denmark A/S and Fine & Mellow Productions A/S. Nordisk Film Distribution AB will distribute in Sweden.