17/01/2014 - The Hunt, The Act of Killing and Helium – as well as Finnish short Do I Have to Take Care of Everything – represent the Nordic countries in the final run for the trophies

One-and-a-half years after it was launched at the Cannes Film Festival to win three awards, including the Ecumenical Prize and Best Actor (Mads Mikkelsen), Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
film profile] was yesterday (January 16) nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign-Language Feature.

"Four Danish films were shortlisted for an Oscar nomination – three of them made it. That's truly unique," said managing director Henrik Bo Nielsen, of the Danish Film Institute, when learning that also Copenhagen-based, US director Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Anders Walter's Helium were in the final run for the trophies, as Best Documentary and Best Live Action Short. "It's the ultimate tribute to all the talented people in the Danish film community and their knack of telling gripping stories that have an international appeal,” Nielsen added.

Produced by Sisse Graum Jørgensen and Morten Kaufmann for Zentropa Entertainments, The Hunt was screened earlier this month at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, where Mikkelsen received the international critics’ FIPRESCI prize for Best Actor of the Year in a Foreign-Language Film. A contender for the Golden Globe, it has received more than 20 major honours, including the Nordic Council Film Prize; Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm shared the European Film Award for Best Scriptwriter. Graum Jørgensen also produced last year’s Danish nominee, Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mikkel Boe Følsgaard
interview: Nikolaj Arcel
film profile] and Susanne Bier’s 2011 Oscar winner In a Better World [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Not a week without a prize for The Act of Killing – last week it was for Best Film and Best Production from US organization Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking. Produced by Signe Byrge Sørensen and Anne Köhncke, for Final Cut for Real, the film deals with the killing of more than one million Indonesians deemed as Communists after the 1965 military coup.

Produced by Kim Magnusson for M&M Productions, Helium is the story of young boy hospitalised with a serious illness. He becomes friends with an eccentric cleaning man, and together they develop a fantasy world full of hope. M&M Productions has won the category three times before – with The New Tenants (2010), This Charming Man (2003) and Election Night (1999).

Finnish director Selma Vilhunen’s Do I Have to Take Care of Everything was also nominated for the Best Live Action Short. Previously awarded at Helsinki, Budapest and Aspen, the Elli Toivoniemi production for Tuffi Films describes a chaotic morning in a family with kids, where the mother is determined to do everything herself.