15/11/2013 - Danish Oscar-winning director Bille August will reunite with Danish actress Ghita Nørby for Christian Torpe’s family drama, shooting from Monday for SF Film

Silent Heart – Danish actress Ghita Nørby, actor Morten Grunwald and director Bille August (l-r, 1st row). Photo credit: Rolf Konow

Danish Oscar-winning director Bille August will reunite with Danish actress Ghita Nørby – the country’s First Lady of Stage and Screen – for Silent Heart, a family drama which will start principal photography Monday (November 18) on the Danish island of Funen.

22 years ago Nørby played the lead as Anna Åkerbloom  – Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s mother – in The Best Intentions, from Bergman’s script, which won August the Golden Palm at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1992. He received his first Cannes trophy in 1989 for Pelle the Conqueror, which also collected the Golden Globe and the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Feature.

August had not signed a Danish film since Pelle the Conqueror, when he returned in 2011 to direct Marie Krøyer [+see also:
trailer
film profile], depicting the marriage between the two Danish artists Marie and PS Krøyer. The SF Film production took 296,000 admissions domestically and was nominated for six Robert awards by the Danish Film Academy. Most recently he was credited for Night Train to Lisbon [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
film profile].

Danish writer Christian Torpe (Rita) has supplied the original script about three generations of a family, gathered for a weekend to say goodbye to Esther - their wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother and friend. She is seriously ill, and they have accepted her wish to die before the disease deteriorates, but as the weekend progresses, they realise that their decision is difficult to handle – they never needed each other as much as they do now.

With Nørby as Esther, and Morten Grunwald (of The Olsen Gang fame), the cast includes Vigga Bro, Paprika Steen, Jens Albinus, Oskar Sælan, Danica Curcic and Pilou Asbæk. Supported by the Danish Film Institute, with backing from TV2 Danmark and FilmFyn, Silent Heart will be produced by Jesper Morthorst for SF Film, which has slated local release for September 2014.