Notat is produced by Creative Alliance, with co-financing from SF Studios. The project will be the first feature film about the terrorist attack at Copenhagen’s Krudttønden café and Synagogue of February 14, 2015, where two people died -filmmaker/producer Finn Nørgaard and Jewish community member and security guard Dan Uzan. Ole Christian Madsen (Kira’s Reason, a Love Story, Flame & Citron) tells us about the project as well as about his experience of working in film & TV drama, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Why did you choose to bring to the screens Copenhagen’s terror attack of February 2015?
Ole Christian Madsen: There are a couple of reasons why we wanted to do it, one of them being that I have personal connections to the topic as I knew Finn Nørgaard, the documentary filmmaker who was killed. He had produced my 1988 documentary For Madmen Only. We hadn’t seen each other in many years, when I heard he’d got shot.

I got in touch with my screenwriter of Flame & Citron, Lars K. Andersen who also knew Finn. We started making notes about the current atmosphere in our society, why there is so much fear and hate. 2015 was a very interesting and weird year. After the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris in January, you could feel how the tension was growing across Europe, and particularly in Denmark where freedom of expression had already been targeted by Islamic radical groups. Then what everyone feared happened three months later and made history. There will always be a ‘before’ and ‘after’ the attack in Copenhagen. After that, immigration regulations and political debates started to change. With Lars K. Andersen, we went deeper into the topic, started to interview some people, including Dan Uzan’s family, and felt we had to make a movie about the Copenhagen attack.

Erik Poppe waited 6-7 years before making U - July 22 about the Utøya massacre. Did you feel a three-year gap was enough? How have the families of the victims reacted to your project?
OCM: People might say it’s too early after three years, but three years is a long time today. Social media accentuates time, events. Today, you process the same amount of information in 10 months as people 20 years ago, used to do in 10 years. The concept of time has changed. In this case, there is a lot of tension in the world, and unfortunately, there has been quite a few terrorist attacks since 2015. I’m afraid it will be forgotten if you don’t make a cultural statement about it.

I’ve spoken to families of the victims and I keep them informed about everything. There are a lot of contradictory feelings from their part as they still feel it is tough to deal with their losses. But they have accepted the idea of a movie being made.

How close is the fiction to the reality and how will the story unfold?
OCM: The movie will obviously be inspired by the true events. I’ve made 4-5 other movies based on reality and you change things to enhance reality. You want to catch the truth and sometimes you have to change reality in order to do that. The drama will unfold during 48 hours and will feature four main characters: the filmmaker, the Jewish guard at the synagogue, the perpetrator of the attack [Omar Abdel Hamid El’Hussein who was eventually killed by the police], as well as the special SWAT police officer who shot him. The film will be character-driven, not plot-driven, and will be a portrait of people at a time of change.

In the late 90s, you made two films about second generation immigrants, Sinan’s Wedding and Pizza King. The tones here will obviously be much darker…
OCM: Yes. My two first films were more innocent as religion hadn’t entered the debate yet. Back then, non-ethnic Danes, 1st-2nd generation immigrants would refer to themselves with the two different origin they had, such as Pakistani/Danish or Kurdish/Danish etc. But now, many refer to themselves as Muslims, i.e. through religion, instead of nationality. There is a big identity shift. I don’t even think that today I could make a film like Pizza King [about 2nd generation immigrants who get embroiled with Copenhagen’s underground crime]. The reality is much rougher, and it’s harder to get into that environment.

Do you have a cast in mind and when do you hope to start filming?
OCM: Oh yes! I know but I can’t discuss it yet. The plan is to start shooting in January 2019.

You’re producing the film through Creative Alliance, that you’re running with fellow directors Per Fly, Lone Scherfig, Dagur Kári, among others, a director-driven company making film and TV projects for the Scandinavian and international markets. How is this partnership going?
OCM: It’s really thrilling. We have one of the biggest slates in Denmark right now. Per Fly just released his film Backstabbing for Beginners, and Lone is working on her New York project. Our partnership allows us to exchange ideas and to have several ambitious projects in development at the same time. The feature film projects are pretty high-end, with $10-$12m budgets; It’s been a tough ride for everyone to raise that kind of money. Co-production is vital but takes time to finalise. My Danish-language film Notat will have a more reasonable budget of about DKK 22.7m (€3m). We’re waiting for some German funding to be confirmed.

Do you intend to make English-language films for Creative Alliance?
OCM: Perhaps. But right now, I feel more confident making English-language in the US and Danish-language movies in Denmark. But with TV drama, it’s different and actually easier. I have some plans for a series to be shot here in English.

How did the TV series Banshee land on your desk and how was that experience for you?
OCM: I had done a lot of TV drama in Denmark [The Spider, Taxi, Unit One], then several movies, and was feeling a bit frustrated at the time by the difficulty to raise financing for feature film. So after Flame & Citron, I started to look at openings in the US. HBO started sending me stuff to consider and at one point I met Allan Ball [American Beauty, True Blood, 6 Feet Under] He was planning a series with Jonathan Tropper, and that was Banshee! I felt it would be a cool project. It took a few seasons before the show found its own style & DNA. I’ve executive produced and directed a lot on that series. I’m very proud of it. It wasn’t a classic crime thriller; it was out there, a bit crazy and reached a kind of cult-status.

Will you continue to make TV drama in the US?
OCM: Yes, I do want to continue working with TV in US, and I want to develop shows here in Scandinavia. I like the high pressure, the tough shooting, the heightened atmosphere around series – and especially how to make it special and different.

There is something interesting about the difference between the two work cultures. We all talk about how US is driven by money but honestly, I’ve never talked so little about money-issues as when I shoot in the US. It’s different here in Scandinavia. We talk about money from very early on, sometimes to a degree that hurts the projects. It is important to have limitations but because of the tough times of financing in our part of the world, it is up front all the time. It is like a relationship: If there’s money enough, you never talk about it with your girlfriend. If there’s not enough, you argue about it all the time. 

In US the big problem is shooting time. The crews are so big and a day of shooting is very expensive. That is why we see major US companies now shooting here in Europe – it feels like the two worlds are coming together these days.