28/03/2008

Period film Flame & Citron [+see also:
trailer
film profile], one of the biggest Danish films ever, is opening wide today on 72 Danish screens, with a marketing campaign on par with those of Harry Potter films, put together by Sandrew Metronome.

Director Ole Christian Madsen (Prague [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) described his fifth feature to Cineuropa: “It’s set during WWII and the German occupation of Denmark and is about an inner circle of activists who were killing Germans and Danish informers. Their fight became more and more radical, almost like terrorism. So it’s quite controversial subject matter.”

Starring Thure Lindhardt and Mads Mikkelsen as the two legendary resistance fighters Flame and Citron, the film has attracted a lot of attention at home because of its exceptionally large budget (€6.5m) and because it deals with a darker part of Danish history never before brought to screens.

According to producer Lars Bredo Rahbek (Nimbus Film), however, the story also has a universal dimension in the sense that it questions the role that native people sometimes take on when fighting against a foreign invasion. “If you look at the situation today with the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan, it continuously raises the question: are the people who refuse to surrender and who resist terrorists or are they freedom fighters? So although this film takes place in Denmark, I think it has some great relevance for audiences around the world. Plus, it’s not a typical period film. It’s structured like a thriller.”

A Eurimages co-production between Denmark’s Nimbus Film and Germany’s Wüste Film, Flame & Citron was co-financed by the Danish Film Institute, TV2 Denmark, Sirena Film (Czech Republic), Studio Babelsberg, Filmförderfonds Hamburg, MBB Berlin Brandeburg, the new Deutsche Filmförderfonds, 4½ Production (Norway), and Nordisk Film & TV Fond. According to Rahbek, a total of 23 international investors were involved in the project.

The Match Factory is handling world sales.