08/02/2004 - The 3rd day of competition at the Berlin Film Festival opens with two Scandinavian films: Beautiful Country by Norwegian Hans Petter Moland and In your hands by the Dane, Annette K. Olesen

The third day of competition at the Berlin Film Festival opens with two Scandinavian films: Beautiful Country by Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland and In your hands [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by the Denmark’s Annette K. Olesen.

Set in Vietnam, Malaysia and America, Beautiful Country is the story of a young Vietnamese boy who goes on a desperate voyage towards America looking for his father, an American, and former-soldier. He goes on this journey with his younger brother and a young Chinese refugee. It is produced by Dynamo Story as well as the American company, Sunflower Productions. The film is an unusual setting for a Scandinavian director: “I don’t have previous experience in this type of thing, but I did a lot of research”, says Moland “I tried to bring out the human side, something we all have in common”.

Annette K. Olesen’s work is an intimate drama following Dogma 95 rules. Together with Kim Fupz Aakeson, the well known screenwriter of The one and only and Okay, she goes back to Berlin, two years after Minor Mishaps [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. In your Hands shows the moving encounter cum battle between a newly ordained woman priest and a woman prisoner, guilty of causing the death of her own little girl. “Many of us felt it was like acting on a set where the people and their lives were real. A very intense experience. It was a difficult and painful work, because the story forced us to deal with the harshness of human tragedies, but also with the deepest part of ourselves”.

(Translated from Italian)