Denmark’s Paloma Prods on co-producing with Triangle of Sadness partners - and new film slate

“2023 is one of our busiest years ever,” says seasoned producer Per Damsgaard Hansen (Winter Brothers, The Return) who set up his new production outfit Paloma Productions with Julie Friis Walenciak in 2019.

After Covid which disrupted his plans, projects in development are well-ahead and several co-productions have had red carpet launches internationally. “We’ve world premiered successfully Lila Avilés’s Tótem in competition at the Berlinale, we went to the Oscars with Triangle of Sadness, we now have Jessica Hausner’s Club Zero in Cannes and we’re in production with Acts of Love,” says Damsgaard Hansen. “After downsizing temporarily during Covid, we’re kicking back, with our other in-house producers Siri Bøge Dynesen - who takes the lead on Acts of Love with Julia - and Laura Elizabeth Luiz Diaz.”

Heading Paloma’s slate in Cannes is the English-language Club Zero, from Austrian festival habitué Hausner, in which Danish star Sidse Babett Knudsen takes one of the title roles, next to Mia Wasikowska, Elsa Zylberstein and Mathieu Demy. The Palme d’or entry which centres on a teacher’s impactful influence on school children and eating as a weapon, will be released in Denmark by Camera Film and in Sweden by Folkets Bio.

Damsgaard Hansen says the main producer Philippe Bober, approached him with the project, after the two had collaborated on Triangle of Sadness. “Jessica already had her eyes on Sidse Babette Knudsen for her film, so my involvement as Danish partner was meant to be.”

Another co-production collaboration that continued after the 2022 Palme d’or was with Östlund’s long-time producer Erik Hemmendorff of Plattform Produktion.

The Danish producer is again attached to Hemmendorff’s next majority produced Redoubt by John Skoog (Ridge), set to start filming in August.

The feature length version of Skoog’s short film Reduit has been more than a decade in the making. It turns on the life of Swedish farm-worker Karl-Göran Persson who spent 30 years building a fortress to protect himself from a potential enemy, until his death in 1975.
“With war in Ukraine, all of a sudden everything that the film deals with has become so true and close to us,” notes Damsgaard Hansen.

Östlund, Skoog, Hausner, but also Jeppe Rønde - currently filming Acts of Love, have in common daring artistic visions and stories reflecting upon political and social issues.

In Acts of Love, co-written by Rønde with Christopher Grøndahl, a woman lives in a religious community. Her orderly life is disrupted when a man from her past arrives and a secret starts to resurface. A secret which can prove disastrous for both as well as for the community.

The film is about children in adult bodies, and how unresolved trauma shapes the way we love and what we believe in.

In the title roles are Jonas Holst Schmidt (Copenhagen Doesn’t Exist), Cecilie Lassen (Walk with Me) and Ann Eleonora Jørgensen (Ride Upon the Storm).

Financiers involved include the Danish Film Institute, the West Danish Film Fund, DR and Scandinavian Film Distribution which handles Nordic rights. Filming in Jutland is due to last a few more weeks and the delivery is slated for 2024.

Among Paloma’s projects in development is seasoned documentary filmmaker Michael Madsen’s fiction debut The Search, due to start filming in 2024. Although a fiction project, the film is actually part of a trilogy with the documentaries Into Eternity (2010) and The Visit (2015), dealing with existential topics, says the producer.

Other projects in development include Bitter Melon Soup by rising talent Thinh Nguyen, and Repulsion by Laurits Flensted-Jensen.