Oscar-nominated Danish director Elvira Lind talks The Letter Room

Multi-awarded for the Danish documentaries Songs for Alexis (2014) and Bobby Jene (2014), supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond, Elvira Lind is making a splash with her short fiction debut The Letter Room.

Produced in the US by Dutch Tilt Film and Lind’s own shingle Mad Gene Media, set up with her husband Oscar Isaac, the film has travelled to several US festivals - Tribeca, Telluride, Palm Springs, ShortFest, Hollyshorts - and is now among five contenders for the coveted Oscar statuette.

Commenting on her Oscar nomination, next to Thomas Vinterberg among others, Lind told nordicfilmandtvnews.com: “Being nominated is a huge honour and I am incredibly grateful my film is being seen by so many people I admire in the industry. And it is of course also an honour to be nominated alongside all these fabulous filmmakers, like fellow Dane Vinterberg. I feel the support from my home in the North right now and it means the world to me. I will always be a Danish filmmaker no matter where I make my films!”

In The Letter Room, Ex-Machina and Inside Llewyn Davis actor Oscar Issac plays Richard, a correctional officer who gets promoted to ‘Director of Prisoners Communication’, a job which allows him in ‘the letter room’, to read all prisoners correspondence. The soft-hearted prison officer is soon captivated by letters from a woman called Rosita (Alia Shawkat) to an inmate on death row (Brian Petsos), and develops a bond with another prisoner played by John Douglas Thompson (The Bourne Legacy, For Life).

Explaining her inspiration for the film, Lind said: “Back in 2015, I listened to a podcast about these lonely American men writing love letters to a woman for decades with whom they slowly fall in love. She writes these beautiful letters to them. Over the years they become emotionally dependent on the correspondence. Eventually they discover the woman is actually a man, just as lonely as them, who has been scamming them out of small amounts of money. As they heartbrokenly discover the truth, they still express how they wish they could continue writing these love letters and how the sudden end to this exchange of letters has left a void in their lives. “

Lind goes on: “I imagined the main character Richard to be someone that could have been part of this story. I started imagining him handling other people’s letters in prison and then set out to “save” them by answering instead of their lost loved ones. I have been trying to find a way to tell a story about the American prison system for a long time, and these two ideas eventually melted together."

Although set in a prison environment, the film has a surprisingly poetic, touching and even humorous tone, which originates from the director’s personal taste for dark comedies. “I love dark comedies! said the 40-year old writer/director. “I’ve always dreamt of making something that tonally fell into that undefined area of comedy, tragedy and drama. When I wrote the story, I honestly thought it would be funnier than it ended up being. I underestimated how dark parts of it is. It needed that darkness to work. But I still find Richard’s character very humorous.”

Having Isaac in the title role was crystal clear form the outset. “Oscar is one of the funniest people I have ever met, and I always imagined him playing Richard,” she said. “I knew he would know how to balance it right. He understands subtleties so well and has an incredible attention to detail. It was a dream to watch him morph into this character.”

Discussing her first experience in the narrative space, Lind said she relied mostly on her directorial instinct, just like with documentaries. “I really relied on a lot of the same things, but technically, it was such a different experience. So much more prep and so many more people. I loved it though. It was a treat to be a team after having been a “one-woman-band” for so long when making docs.”

The film premiered exclusively on the US-curated streamer Topic March 11. According to Deadline, the short film was recently picked up by Arte France, Telefonica for Spain, Shot TV for Russia, New Europe Film Sales for Poland. It will premiere in Denmark on TV2 April 24. Global sales are handled by Salaud Morisset.

Asked how or if she intends to build bridges between the US and Scandinavia, Lind said: “That’s such a great question. I think that every day I try to build those bridges in my daily life with kids that are both Danish and American, connecting one part of me with the other, and maybe telling stories from that place becomes a way of doing that too. Navigating between those cultures inspires stories of a certain kind. But I think my main bridge between the US and Denmark is my collaborations with Danes during the creation (editor, sound, producer etc) while telling stories that are set here in the US.”

The hybrid Oscars ceremony will be held Sunday April 25 in Los Angeles.

TO SEE THE TRAILER: CLICK HERE.