19/05/2024 - CANNES 2024: Taking the Danish child killings of the 1910s as his starting point, the Swedish helmer recreates a period Copenhagen inspired by collective memory

(© Fabrizio de Gennaro/Cineuropa)

The Girl with the Needle [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Magnus von Horn
film profile], competing at the 77th Cannes International Film Festival, is a harrowing account of serial child killer Dagmar Overbye, who systematically killed a number of infants in Copenhagen during the 1910s. Directed by Swede Magnus von Horn and shot in Poland, the film is created through a series of carefully devised aesthetic choices.

Cineuropa: How did you come to this project – or it to you?
Magnus von Horn: It came to me, via the producer, Malene Blenkov, and the writer, Line Langebek Knudsen. They proposed this story of these horrible crimes committed around the time of World War I, in Denmark. I had no knowledge – I don’t think many Swedes do – of this woman, Dagmar Overbye, who killed these babies that she said would be put up for adoption. It really struck a chord in me, one of fear. I have small children of my own, and what scares me the most is if something were to happen to them. I decided to use this fear of mine and make a film out of it. It became a drama, with horror in the background. All this, a black-and-white period film at that, is something I’ve never done before. It inspired me.

Your previous features, The Here After [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Magnus von Horn
film profile] and Sweat [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Magnus von Horn
film profile], are quite different. Why do you think the producers of this film came to you?
I knew Malene Blenkov from before, we had discussed a couple of projects and she knows what I like. And we both wanted to work together, so that’s probably a big reason.

Were the parts played by Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm written with them in mind?
They were not. The script was developed quite a while before I met with them. We did an extensive casting job, but when I met Vic, she felt like the only actress with the look and the emotional register needed for the part of the young, pregnant girl, ready to travel back into another universe with totally different moral values. Trine, first and foremost, is a fantastic actress. I presented an early draft to her, which she turned down at our first meeting. But already there and then, I saw a look in her eyes that convinced me that she was the one. She also played with a toothpick in a certain way that just drew me in, so our meeting almost felt like a screen test. We then worked with the script for another year, and when she read the new version, she was willing to be a part of it.

The film is a Danish-Polish-Swedish co-production. Can you talk about the dynamics of these countries on this journey?
The story is Danish. The people I work best and most effectively with are Polish, so it was really important for me to get the Polish collaborators on board, not least DoP Michal Dymek, who recently shot EO [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. We did the whole shoot in Poland. Sweden, of course, has always supported me and my films, which is a relationship I cherish.

Can you talk about the Copenhagen of circa 1919 depicted in the film and your aesthetic choices?
There’s one significant identifier: we hear the bells of the Rådhuset town hall. Otherwise, there are no identifying elements of a Copenhagen of that time. I don’t think the audience will pay attention or mind, but I think they’ll be visually stimulated. Rather than focusing on the correct doorknobs or wallpaper, we went for what felt was emotionally eye-catching. One of my methods was to Google a search term like “Europe 1919”. I would then get a series of pictures that lie in our collective memory.

At times, the film even looks like it was actually shot around 1919. Did you attempt to do it that way?
Partly, at least. When you look at it, you might get that feeling, and we played with framings and camera movements, mimicking the style of the times. It’s also through Vic and her performance, I think. In one of our preparations, I put her in front of a Chaplin clip and told her to act like she’s seeing a movie for the first time. Her ways, her facial expressions, they certainly have some things that resonate with the period.

There’s even a shot that seems like a direct copy of what is sometimes known as the first-ever motion picture, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory from 1895.
It’s a direct copy. Some will notice it, others won’t, but again, it’s part of our collective memory.