Flee and The Worst Person in the World make history with triple and double Oscar nods

The two features supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond, are represented in the US by Neon Distribution.

The historical triple nominations for Flee at the world’s most prestigious awards announced today, celebrates the film’s artistic achievement, as a mix of archive footage, 2D and expressive animation to tell the real-live story of Rasmussen’s close friend Amin (pseudonym), an afghan refugee who arrived in Denmark 25 years ago. He opens up to the director to re-tell his traumatic experience and reveal a secret kept for two decades.

"It’s insane!" told Poher Rasmussen to www.nordicfilmandtvnews.com, just one hour after hearing the extraordinary news, while enjoying a glass of champagne. “It started out as a small project with a friend who wanted to share his story with me and [suggesting] that we should do something with it. It was meant to be a 20-minute project, then it grew and grew-and 10 years after-here we are!”

“I’ve never dreamt that I would be here [on the road to the Oscars]. It’s incredible and I’m still trying to digest this. I’m just so happy for my team - working with Amin, him telling me his story was a special experience and to be recognised this way is unique,” said the director.

Flee has had a meteoric career since its Official Selection at Cannes’s digital edition in 2020, grabbing notably the 2021 Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, Best Feature at Annecy and the Nordic Council Film Prize. Most recently it won among others the US Gotham Awards, triple wins at the European Film Awards and four national Robert awards last Saturday.

The film was produced by Monica Hellström, Signe Byrge Sørensen and Charlotte de la Gournerie for Final Cut for Real, a company twice Oscar nominated for Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing in 2014 and The Look of Silence in 2016. Flee was released in Denmark by Reel Pictures.

Denmark is also nominated through Martin Strange-Hansen's short film On My Mind, competing for Best Live Action Short. This is the second nod for the director after The Charming Man (2003). The film is produced by Kim Magnusson for M&M Productions, an habitué at the Hollywood glamorous awards, with eight earlier nominations in the short film category and four wins.

Read our earlier interview with Jonas Poher Rasmussen: CLICK HERE.

Norway’s double Oscar hope
Joachim Trier’s relationship drama has a double chance to bring home Norway’s first Oscar statuette, as stated by Kjersti Mo, CEO of the Norwegian Film Institute: “All the attention and now the nomination puts not only The Worst Person in the World, but also Norwegian film in general on the world map. Now we look forward to seeing if it will be the first Oscar award for a Norwegian feature film during the award ceremony in March."

The original screenplay nomination celebrates the two-decade long collaboration between Eskil Vogt and director Joachim Trier. The third instalment in their Oslo trilogy had a successful world premiered in Cannes where Renate Reinsve scooped Norway’s first ever female acting prize at the prestigious French festival, for her role as Julie, shifting from one lover (Anders Danielsen Lie) to the next (Herbert Nordrum), in search of herself.

Since July, the film has picked up over 15 awards including Best Foreign Language Film at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

The film produced by Thomas Robsahm for Oslo Pictures, is Trier’s biggest theatrical success in Norway, with more than 231,000 admissions - despite tight Covid - restrictions in the cinemas.

In the US, the film just opened this week and scored the highest per screen average for any film of 2022, and the third-highest for any film of 2021 after Licorice Pizza and Spider-Man: No Way Home. It also registered the biggest opening ever for a Norwegian film in the US, with $135,042 gross from four cinemas in New York and L.A., and a per screen average of $33,768.

Vogt also served as co-script consultant on Flee.

Read our interview with Joachim Trier, Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie: CLICK HERE.

The 2022 Oscars will take place on March 27 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.