14/03/2008

Two years after We Shall Overcome [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2006's biggest Danish hit with 406,000 admissions), Niels Arden Oplev is back at the top of the Danish charts with Worlds Apart, which has so far amassed 160,000 admissions from 65 screens after three weeks.

Based on a true story, the film focuses on Sara, a 17-year-old girl who grows up happily within a Jehovah’s Witness community. When she falls in love with a non-believer, she is faced with the hardest choice of her life: to choose between her warm and loving family and her boyfriend, who are worlds apart.

At the last Berlinale, where the film was introduced as part of Generation 14Plus, Arden Oplev told Cineuropa: “I think that youngsters will identify with – or perhaps envy – the notion of love within the family. But the film is also about losing all that. The tragedy of losing your family, not because of fundamentalism, but because of divorce, is something many youngsters will identify to.”

Worlds Apart was produced by Thomas Heinesen for Nordisk Film. Rikke Ennis from Trust/Nordisk, who handles sales, said the film was sold to Greece and Mexico and several European territories are in negotiation.

Two new domestic films on Nordisk Film’s line-up are hitting Danish screens today. The auteur film Dancers by Pernilla Fischer Christensen, who had her breakthrough in 2006 with her directorial debut A Soap [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lars Bredo Rahbek
interview: Pernille Fischer Christensen
film profile] (15 screens), and the popular franchise family film The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar 3 (80 screens).

Dancers is set in a dance school run by the lively Annika (Trine Dyrholm) and her mother (Birthe Neumann). One day Annika falls for Lasse (Anders W. Berthelsen), but she soon finds out that his past is tainted. The film was produced by Meta Louise Foldager for Zentropa, in co-production with Memfis Film (Sweden). Trust/Nordisk handles sales.

Other new titles opening today include El Método by Argentinean filmmaker Marcelo Pineyro, released by Øst For Paradis.