30/07/2015 - Danish director Kenneth L. Truelsen’s English-language feature debut, Doula– a supernatural grindhouse tale– will begin New Mexico shoot in August

Doula director Kenneth L. Truelsen with producer Mona Skriver

After completing multiple shorts, including The Hitchhiker (2011), Danish writer-director Kenneth L. Truelsen is preparing his feature debut, the English-language Doula, which will begin shooting in New Mexico in August. Production will be handled by Truelsen’s own company, Tape_7 Productions, which he started with his partner, Mona Skriver, in 2009 in the provincial Danish town of Kolding.

While supernatural grindhouse tale’s largely American cast has yet to be announced, Czech cinematographer Milan Chadima is on-board to work behind the camera. In regards to production, Skriver will collaborate with Norway’s Bendik Heggen Strønstad (Thale (2012), Villmark Asylum (2015)), for Yesbox Productions, with US producer Jerry G. Angelo and with producer/executive producer Mark Myers (Manson Family Vacation, Experimenter (2015)), for Citizen Skull Productions.

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Described by Skriver as “redneck survival horror meets gothic ghosts,” Doula– which was also scripted by Truelsen– is set in a town, haunted by the ghost of the local midwife, Abigail, who does not deliver babies, but rather, prevents new life from being born. Residents have made it a habit to trap passers by and force them to keep her busy, so when four girlfriends on a roadtrip enter town, they come to wish they hadn’t.

“We work with a genre– horror- which is rather unusual in Denmark; difficult too, because it is in the cross field of commercial and artistic filmmaking,” explained Skriver. “But there is an increasing focus on these films through Nordic Genre Invasion, the marketing and distribution initiative, which most recently launched a promotion programme in Cannes.”