06/12/2005

Malmö-based production outfit Hepp Film, headed by 2002 EAVE graduate Helena Danielsson, is going to attend the Sundance Film Festival (19-29 January, 2006) with Clive Gordon’s Cargo which will have its world premiere in the out-of competition Premieres section.

Hepp Film acts as a minority co-producer with Swedish regional fund Film i Väst on this majority Spanish/UK co-production between Morena Films and Slate Films. Clive Gordon, established UK documentary filmmaker is directing a strong European cast including the German star of Goodbye Lenin! [+see also:
trailer
interview: Wolfgang Becker
film profile] Daniel Brühl, Scottish actors Peter Mullan (On a Clear Day) and Gary Lewis (Merry Christmas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Christian Carion
interview: Christophe Rossignon
film profile]) and the Spanish Luis Tosar from Joaquín Oristrell’s Inconscientes [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. The thriller based on a script by Ken Loach’s usual collaborator Paul Laverty, tells of a young backpacker who after becoming mixed up in some trouble while travelling through Africa, stows away on a Europe-bound cargo ship filled with mysteries. The film is sold internationally by Wild Bunch.

Hepp Film was also the Swedish co-production partner of Danish outfit Cosmo Film on the documentary Smiling In a War Zone which just screened in Amsterdam’s IDFAs documentary film festival. The film follows the filmmaker Simone Aaberg Kærn on her odyssey to war-torn Kabul where she tries to find a little girl who survived the Taliban regime. The film will be released in Sweden by Triangel Film next Spring.

In an undoubtedly busy year for Hepp, the company produced the first Swedish film by Maria von Heland whose directorial debut was the teenage drama Big Girls Don’t Cry released by German Columbia Pictures in 2002. Her new film Search starring Amanda Ooms, Lia Boysen and Pernilla August focuses on a single and childless 38-year old woman who starts internet dating but the more men she meets, the further from family happiness she finds herself. The film sold by Trust Film Sales will premiere in Sweden through Sonet Film next Spring.