19/04/2013 - Danish director Gabriel Axel, who celebrated his 95th birthday yesterday (April 18), received the Academy Award in 1988 for a film few believed in

It took Danish director Gabriel Axel 14 years to convince the Danish Film Institute that his adaptation of Danish author Karen Blixen's Babette's Feast was worth supporting - "there is not a quarter of an hour's cinema in this crap," said one of the institute's consultants. On April 11, 1988, he received Denmark's first Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film.

It was not easy to find a production company, either. Axel had turned to Aarhus-born Just Betzer (the owner of Panorama Films), who had been assistant producer on his Hagbard and Signe (1967) in Iceland, and when they thought they were finally ready to shoot, the Norwegian co-producer fell out. Blixen's tale Babette's Feast is set in northern Norway - it was changed to western Jutland in Denmark, with French actress Stéphane Audran, Sweden's Jarl Kulle, Bibi Andersson and Denmark's Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel in the leads.

Both the late Pope John Paul II and the current Pope Francis included it among their favourite films, and the success provided the international financing of Axel's Royal Deceit/Prince of Jutland (1994), the Gabriel Byrne, Christian Bale and Helen Mirren-starrer about Prince Amled, who modelled William Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Born by Danish parents, Axel grew up in Paris, went to acting school at Copenhagen's Royal Theatre, returned to Paris, worked on the stage as actor and director in both countries late 1940s-mid 1950s, until he started his film career (till now of 69 titles) in 1955. A frequent visitor to the cinemas, Axel is still writing for the screen - most recently he has finished an adaption of Blixen's The Heroine/Heloïse, one of her Winter Tales about the dilemma of a women's rebellion, and a script based on the work of French author Jean Genet.