What triggered your decision to end your collaboration with Michael Obel?
I've been in that relationship with a few stop overs. I did I am Dina with Nordisk Film and I worked with Miramax/Dimension a couple of years also without Michael. So we have been going back and forth. In this context, what I need is some new air, to get some new inspiration and an opportunity to meet new people from Denmark and from abroad.
What is your vision for 4 Fiction?
I have several Danish films and US films in development. Hopefully I will produce and direct my own films, and team up with other people because I have a lot of projects in development and cannot direct everything. I hope to connect with talented people in Denmark and Scandinavia to make films based on what I think can make a good movie...
Which is?
A mix between the best in European cinema and the best in US cinema, with strong cast, strong psychology (the roots of European film) mixed with great storytelling like in the US.
Talking about savoir faire, you write your own films, and the audience (in Denmark primarily) has been very responsive to them. How much time do you spend in development?
Basically I always write. The film I just finished DeliverUus From Evil is very strong psychologically, very violent. But it was actually quite easy to write the story, the characters being so brutal and the plot quite simple. The screenplay for Just Another Love Story on the contrary was very complicated, with characters lying, playing several different characters. It depends how the wind blows and how inspiration comes. I was really upset when the Coen brothers that I really admire, said they can write a script in a weekend. For Miller's Crossing, they said it was really tough: it took them four-five months! Screenplay development is of course the key for any film. A lot of screenplays I read in Europe or in the US are just not ready to be filmed. I will make a lot of effort to bring screenplays to their optimum. I have people looking for screenplays and marketing my own screenplays in the US.
You've teamed up with Sam Raimi and Ghost House Pictures to remake The Substitute and Just Another Love Story in the US. Will you also direct the US versions as you did with Nightwatch?
I'm only executive producer on the films. I have a good relationship with Ghost House and Mandate. I have actually two or three other stories I want to make in the US. My ambition is just to find the right story and to make a good movie, be it a UK, US, Danish or Japanese film. I really don't care.
Deliver us From Evil - opening in Denmark on March 27, 2009 - is yet another thriller, but for the first time there will be a strong social and immigration backdrop. Does that mean you're becoming more politically involved?
It's only in post-production that I realized how political the film is. Over the past 15 years, we've had these silly discussions about immigrants and integration all over Europe, racism etc. All of a sudden it turned out that Deliver Us from Evil is an allegory on hatred towards foreigners. It shows how insane things can develop if people do not talk to each other. Europe has suffered so much over the last decade or two because of that.
So you expect a lot of controversy...
Perhaps. The other interesting thing is that in some ways, the film is very Danish and in another way, it's non Scandinavian because for the first time, I chose to write the characters without background. I didn't care about their background, which is almost blasphemy in European cinema. You always have to describe where the characters come from, how was their childhood etc...I tried to describe square characters, a good guy and a bad guy, more like in cowboy movies. That was provocative to some early readers of the script who wanted to know the characters' psychological background. But I said: there is no psychological aspect. People are the way they are because that's what they are! It turned out that it works!!! Because the film is brutal, and because the characters are square, it becomes profound, which is interesting.
Another project Conditio, will be about the war in Iraq. Another very political subject matter...
Conditio is in development, but now I am writing a dark comedy called The Killers from Butte (a very small town in the US). It's about two stupid craftsmen who want to kill their wives because it is too expensive to get a divorce. They hire a Russian killer to do the job. It turns out that he is an alcoholic and cannot do the job. I'm also developing a musical in the US and a Japanese thriller in the English language to be shot in Tokyo.
What are your views on Danish cinema today, and Danish creativity? Last year there was a lot of talk about a so called crisis in Danish film...
I think it's an artificial stupid balloon. When you look every year, you have almost two or three really good Danish movies that reach the audience. We have one of the biggest local market shares (25-30%) with France. That's quite extraordinary for a small country. We have great filmmakers like Ole Christian Madsen, Per Fly, Susanne Bier, Lars von Trier.