Exclusive: Co-founder Anne Köhncke has moved from Copenhagen to her native city Oslo where she is now running the company’s new production outpost.

Ten years after founding the renowned Danish documentary and feature film production house Final Cut for Real with Signe Byrge Sørensen, Köhncke is piloting her company’s Nordic expansion. 

Explaining her move to nordicfilmandtvnews.com, the producer of the award-winning films The Act of Killing and Pervert Park says she intends to produce both features and documentary films of high artistic quality from new and established directors.

“Final Cut for Real Norway will benefit from the strong international network, pool of experience and knowledge that my colleagues and I have built over the years,” she adds. “While in Denmark, all of us four producers [Köhncke, Byrge Sørensen as well as Monica Hellström and Heidi Elise Christensen] take all decisions together, here in Norway I will be more independent and able to take decisions on my own, keeping of course open to any input from my Copenhagen colleagues,” she says.

For Köhncke, “establishing and nourishing strong creative relationships with directors is quintessential, and she hopes to develop collaborations with new directors through Final Cut for Real Norway while working with her existing creative partners, including Swedish/Danish Frida and Lasse Barkfors [Sundance Special Jury Prize winners with Pervert Park], Carl Olsson, directed of the Göteborg competition entry Patrimonium, and newcomer Anders Jepsen. 

Byrge Sørensen said: “We are extremely happy and proud that Anne is now ready to move forward with her Norwegian dream. Anne is an amazing producer with a very strong eye for new talent, and independent spirit and an enormous network in the Nordic countries and internationally. I look forward to continuing our collaboration both within Final Cut for Real in Denmark and in the new Norwegian company.”

Köhncke’s current projects include Frida and Lasse Barkfors’ third instalment in the docu trilogy about social stigma, initiated with Pervert Park and Death of a Child. The third film School Shooters which was pitched at the last IDFA Forum, will deal with the tragic phenomenon of school shootings in the US, from the perspective of the parents of the perpetrators. The project produced by Final Cut for Real and Lasse & Frida Barkfors’ Sweden-based De Andra Film, has so far received co-financing from DR, SVT and Film i Skåne. Köhncke hopes to start filming in the spring. 

 After Patrimonium, an exploration of time through the portrait of Danish noble landed gentry, Carl Olsson will use his unique tableau framing and filmmaking technique with the film A Place Above the Sky. The film centres on individuals working with death. The director said: “When we die, there are still some practicalities that need to be taken care of before our time among the living is finally over. In A Place Above the Sky we enter the world around our end station, an industry of death. It is a place where the existential meets the mundane, the sacred meets the profane."

The project in advanced development stage is produced by Sweden’s De Andra Film in co-production with Denmark’s Final Cut for Real, in association with SVT, support from the Swedish Film Institute and Film i Skåne.