Eurimages backs Jensen and Gaup, starting new features next month
- The Council of Europe’s co-production fund will support Anders Thomas Jensen’s black comedy, Men and Chicken, and Nils Gaup’s historical epic, The Last King
Danish writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen - who most recently delivered the script for Kenneth Kainz’s fantasy adventure, The Shamer’s Daughter [+see also:
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film profile], currently shooting in the Czech Republic – will next month (April) start principal photography for his first directorial project in almost ten years, Men and Chicken.
Jensen, who also wrote Danish director Susanne Bier’s Oscar-winning In a Better World [+see also:
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film profile] (2010), has himself written the black comedy about two outcast brothers who reunite with their relatives, only to be faced with a cruel truth about themselves and their family. Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen will play the lead.
For the production he will reunite with Tivi and Kim Magnusson, of M&M Productions, who staged his three previous features (and his Oscar-winning short, Election Night). Germany’s Babelsberg will co-produce the feature, which is supported by Eurimages (€420,000), the Danish Film Institute (€1.1 million) and local distributor Walt Disney Denmark, which will release it next year.
The Council of Europe’s co-production fund has contributed €460,000 to Norwegian director Nils Gaup’s The Last King [+see also:
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interview: Nils Gaup
film profile], which will also be shooting from next month for Norwegian producers Finn Gjerdrum and Stein B Kvae, of Paradox, with Ireland’s Newgrange Pictures and Hungary’s Proton Cinema. Set in 1206, during the Civil War, Norwegian newcomer Ravn Laneskog’s screenplay follows the two men who escape with the two-year-old prince Haakon Haakonsson, whom half the kingdom is out to kill, thus changing the history of Norway. Nordisk Film will handle Scandinavian distribution.
Meanwhile, Gaup’s next film, Glass Dolls, will open on 4 April (through SF Norge). The first of three adaptions of Norwegian author Jorun Thørring’s crime novels, it follows Tromsø’s head of police, Sami detective Aslak Eira, as he searches for (what turns out to be) a serial killer in a student environment. Stein Leikanger scripted the thriller, and it is being produced by Tomas Backström and Petter Borgli for Red Squair Ventures. Gaup’s Pathfinder (1987) was nominated for an Oscar.
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