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CANNES 2010 Denmark

Metz and Boe offer Danish visions of Afghan war

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Two very different Danish films on the Afghan war will be seen at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival (May 12-23). Janus Metz’s documentary Armadillo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Janus Metz, director of Arm…
film profile
]
, selected in the International Critics Week (SIC) sidebar is a portrayal of the war from the frontline; while Christoffer Boe’s Everything Will Be Fine, chosen in the Directors' Fortnight, is a political thriller dealing with prisoners of war.

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According to Jean-Christophe Berjon, general delegate of SIC, Armadillo will be the first documentary to screen in the section since it turned competitive in 1990.

Metz is a well-known documentary filmmaker, and winner of multiple awards for Tickets to Paradise and Love on Delivery, a diptych on the sex trade and marriages between Thai girls and Danish men. In Armadillo, he focuses on a Danish division of soldiers at war in Afghanistan, more specifically two of them, Mads and Daniel. Through their eyes, Metz offers unique insight into the conflict, questioning the possibility of achieving peace through war.

The film was produced by Ronnie Fridthjof and Sara Stockmann for Fridthjof Film Docs, with co-financing from broadcasters TV2 Denmark, YLE (Finland) and NRK (Norway).

Boe is returning to the Croisette, where he had his breakthrough in 2003 with his feature debut Reconstruction, winner of a Camera d’Or. His following films, Allegro [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
and Offscreen [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, also collected numerous international awards.

With Everything Will Be Fine, the 36-year-old director tries his hand at a new genre, the political thriller, in which a filmmaker stumbles upon photographs of prisoners from the Afghan war being tortured by Danish soldiers. Suspecting a political conspiracy, he gets sucked into a frenetic chase to reveal the mystery behind the photos, only to discover a truth far more disturbing than he imagined.

The film was produced by Tine Grew Pfeiffer, partner with Boe in the production company Alphaville Pictures Copenhagen; and co-produced by Svensk Filmindustri AB and France’s Love Streams Agnès B. Productions. World sales are handled by The Match Factory.

The film was released in Denmark by SF Film Compagniet on January 28.

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