27/05/2014 - After a successful 2013, the Swedish regional film centre – and Scandinavia’s largest co-producer – is ready with a new line-up of local and international films

Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen – at Cannes with Danish director Kristian Levring’s The Salvation [+see also:
trailer
interview: Kristian Levring
film profile], screening in the official programme – and screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen were among the guests when the Swedish regional film centre, Film i Väst, announced its line-up of upcoming co-productions on 17 May in Trollhättan.

Almost ten years after his latest drama-thriller-comedy, Adam’s Apples [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anders Thomas Jensen
interview: Mads Mikkelsen
interview: Tivi Magnusson
film profile], and after having written 49 films mainly for others, Jensen has scripted Men & Chicken for himself to direct, with Mikkelsen in the lead. Produced by Denmark’s M&M Productions, with Film i Väst, the black comedy follows two outcast brothers who reunite with their relatives to learn a cruel truth about themselves and their family. It will shoot in Trollhättan this autumn.

Danish producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen – CEO of Zentropa Entertainments – is behind another major Trollhättan co-production, a two-feature and four-part TV series adaption of Swedish author Frans G Bengtsson’s Röde Orm (1941-1945). Jensen described it as “the first really good Viking movie made in Scandinavia”. 

Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland, whose In Order Of Disappearance [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Hans Petter Moland
film profile] was selected for the Berlinale, will direct the international big-budget production from a screenplay by Danish writer Tobias Lindholm (R [+see also:
trailer
film profile], A Hijacking [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tobias Lindholm
film profile], now shooting A War [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tobias Lindholm
film profile]). Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård, who was also in Moland’s latest film, will head the cast.

Scandinavia’s largest co-producer has also scheduled several projects with local partners: Hannes Holm’s A Man Called Ove, from Fredrik Backman’s bestselling novel; Axel Peterson’s second feature, Under the Pyramid, a thriller which will also film in Copenhagen, Tel Aviv and Egypt; and Sanna Lenken’s feature debut, My Skinny Sister [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sanna Lenken
film profile]. 

In 2013, Film i Väst had a share in Danish director Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mikkel Boe Følsgaard
interview: Nikolaj Arcel
film profile] and Norwegian directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Kon-Tiki [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], both nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film. It was also involved in Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
film profile], considered for the same prizes earlier this year.

The centre’s local co-productions were nominated for 38 and received 11 Guldbagge Awards, Sweden’s national film prizes, and three of them topped the domestic box office, including Felix Herngren’s The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Per Fly’s Waltz for Monica [+see also:
trailer
interview: Edda Magnason
interview: Per Fly
film profile] and Hannes Holm’s Sune on Road Trip.