06/11/2013 - Advance publicity second to none in Denmark for Danish award-winning director Nils Malmros’ so far most personal film, which deals with a tragic event in his own life

Prior to its local premiere, Danish director Nils Malmros’ 11^th feature, Sorrow and Joy [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], will be launched on November 11 at a red-carpet gala as an official entry in the Rome International Film Festival (November 8-17), attended by Malmros, actors Jacob Cedergren, Helle Fagralid, Nicolas Bro, cinematographer Jan Weincke, line producer Louise Birk Petersen and producer Thomas Heinesen, of Nordisk Film.

Festival director Marco Müller watched Sorrow and Joy in New Nordic Films at the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund and immediately invited Malmros to supply it as one of the 16 world premieres for his 8^th international competition. The last Danish contender in Rome was Susanne Bier’s Oscar-winner, In A Better World [+see also:
trailer
film profile], in 2010. Denmark’s TrustNordisk handles international sales of both.

Nordisk Film Biografdistribution has scheduled a preview of the film at the CinemaxX theatre in Malmros’ native city of Aarhus (November 7), before the Copenhagen gala (November 12) and national release on 113 screens (November 14). Advance publicity in Denmark has been second to none, since he disclosed the film deals with a tragic event in his own life.

Depicting the life of a filmmaker and the teacher he married, Sorrow and Joy shows what happened before and after that day in February 1984, when his wife in a psychotic state killed their nine-month-old daughter in their home, while he was delivering a lecture at a college on Funen. They are still together, and after she retired from her job she thought he should make the film about their sorrow and misfortune.

Considered a major auteur of Danish cinema, Malmros has extensively drawn on his memories from growing up and living in provincial Aarhus for such films as The Tree of Knowledge (1981), which was selected for Cannes, Beauty and The Beast (1983) and Pain of Love (1992), which competed in Berlin. His films have four times won the Danish Film Critics’ Bodil and the Danish Film Academy’s Robert awards; in 2005 he received the Honorary Prize of the CPH:PIX-Copenhagen International Film Festival.