25/09/2012 - The Danish director, who made his international breakthrough with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, will shoot his next film in Denmark from a book he himself inspired

Danish director Niels Arden Oplev (photo) was telling Danish actor-author Morten Kirkskov that he wanted to make a film about a teenager who loses his mother, and the consequences for the bereaved. Kirkskov became very quiet: "This is my own story," he said.

Arden Oplev encouraged him to write it as a novel – it became Kirkskov's literary debut, Race Walking – and now the director, who has lived in America for the past three years, will return to Denmark to film it, he explained to Danish film magazine ekko.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Niels Arden Oplev
interview: Søren Stærmose
film profile] (2009) - part one of Swedish author Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy – launched his international career, which most recently took him to the director's chair for his first US thriller, Dead Man Down, starring Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace and Dominic Cooper.

"In the US I might make a film every third year and make three times as much money as in Denmark, but I hope that I can change between a large production here and a small intense movie at home," said Arden Oplev, who will not only go back to Denmark, but also to the time of his 2006 feature debut, We shall overcome [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

The story of 12-year-old Fritz, who challenges repressive school authority in late 1960s provincial Denmark with support from a hippie teacher, finished at No 5 on the local charts with 406,000 admissions. Race Walking is set in western Jutland in the 1970s.

The lead character in Arden Oplevs new film, which will be scripted by Bo hr. Hansen, is 13-year-old Martin, who is in puberty and alternatively dreams of Kristine the girl and Kim the boy, when he suddenly loses his mother to cancer, and the family falls apart.