Danish auteur Refn says he’s a modern-day Hans Christian Andersen, inspired by the globe, but shooting his new film Her Private Hell in Copenhagen; Norway’s Ulven moves from music to acting in Low Expectations.
In the special Cannes episode of the Nordic Film Talks podcast, we talk to two very different creative forces: Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn talks about exploring around the world and returning to Copenhagen to shoot his first feature in a decade, Her Private Hell; and Norwegian actress Marie Ulven, better known as musician Girl in Red, talks about life mirroring art, as she takes on her first acting role in Low Expectations (Lave forventninger).
Ahead of the Cannes premiere of Her Private Hell, Refn wants the film to remain mysterious, so that the audience doesn’t quite know what to expect. “The most pleasurable artistic experiences I've had, personally, has always been walking into something I had zero knowledge about,” he says in the podcast interview.
He says the style of the film combines everything from horror to sci-fi to opera to Douglas Sirk-style melodrama. The film’s official synopsis reads: “When a mysterious mist engulfs a futuristic metropolis, unleashing a deadly and elusive entity, a troubled young woman searches for her father. Her quest collides with an American GI on a harrowing odyssey to rescue his daughter from Hell.”
The cast is led by Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu and Kristine Frøseth.
Refn had originally thought he might shoot the film in Japan - it includes some Japanese-language scenes and Japanese actors. But he realised the vision he had of this future metropolis didn’t exist in Japan or anywhere else, so instead he chose to build sets in Copenhagen and shoot the entire film in Denmark in the summer of 2025. “I came to realise that the world I wanted to make didn't exist, so I just built everything on sets. It became my world, and then I could move everything around, like dolls.”
Her Private Hell premieres out of competition at Cannes on May 18, and Neon International handles sales.
Refn, born in Denmark, but growing up mostly in New York, now splits his time between Copenhagen and Los Angeles. He’s been thinking more about his Danish connections: “There's a lot of similarities between myself and Hans Christian Andersen, that's what I've been told. Maybe there is a kind of kindred sensibility of what it means to move outwards, to go to the edges of the world and see and feel - he had a great quote, which is ‘to travel is to live’. I very much agree with that. Sometimes you can do it in your mind, it doesn't have to be physical travel, but the idea of fantasy,”
In his full interview, Refn also talks about a near-death experience three years ago which has spurred new creative inspiration, why father-and-daughter stories appeal to him, and how he created the film’s famous mist.
Ulven, meanwhile, is an acclaimed Norwegian musician known as Girl in Red, with a global following, who makes her acting debut in Low Expectations, the debut feature of Eivind Landsvik (backers include NFTVF).
She plays Maja, a musician who has a career crisis and decides to move back in with her mother in her hometown while she figures out what’s next in life. The film co-stars Tone Mostraum as Maja’s mother and Anders Danielsen Lie as a school colleague.
Ulven remembers her first audition with Landsvik: “I was not prepared, and I had never sat in front of anybody pretending or acting or like gone into a scene like that. But we did it a couple of times, and then I felt a little bit more comfortable, after some tries.”
She adds with a laugh: “I'm still very much careful with the term ‘actress’. That feels big.”
She mostly prepared by reading the script multiple times and discussing it with Landsvik. He encouraged her to watch some influential films, like Good Will Hunting, Lady Bird, and Annie Hall.
Ulven says it was unusual to be playing a young musician, something close to her own life, but that she is very different from Maja - Landsvik had written the role before he met her. “That was the thing that I was overthinking a lot: Is the only question that people are going to ask me: ‘Are you the same person?’ I really was acting.”
She enjoyed the collaborative relationship with Landsvik. “I have a lot of respect for Eivind. This being my first-ever film, I think I was careful when it came to bringing too much of myself. But he’d say: ‘Let’s do a few takes, let’s play with it, let’s see what happens.’ We were exercising a few things here and there.”
Maja is in an introspective phase of her life, not really sharing much with her mother or colleagues what she’s really thinking about her life. “She's quite quiet, and you can tell that she's thinking about stuff. I was trying to disappear within [thoughts] during filming that would make me feel certain things that I thought maybe would bring out the scene more. There is a lot of silence in the film, but that's also what I think is cool.”
She continues: “You don't want to over-explain anything. You know the good old saying ‘Show, don't tell’.”
Low Expectations premieres in Directors’ Fortnight on May 19, and is sold by Salaud Morisset and top-financed by Nordisk Film & TV Fond. In the full podcast interview, Ulven also talks about her preparation process for her first acting job; why she’s in a different phase of life than her character Maja; and friendship with neighbour Renate Reinsve, who has Fjord in Cannes.
LIsten to the full episode here:
All Nordic Film Talks episodes are available on NFTVF’s website in the Industry Insights section (CLICK HERE), and on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
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