As Jonas Kærup Hjort’s striking feature debut Penultimate is finally hitting Danish screens November 25 via Solaris, producer Rikke Tambo Andersen has confirmed that she will also be attached to his next project Levitating Skin (Huden letter), which just received support from the Danish Film Institute. Hjort’s sophomore feature will again combine a strong visual filmic style with a unique humanistic tale. The intriguing two-liner tagline says the story will centre on a mysterious person, coming out of nowhere, who starts leading women astray, ultimately resulting in the bloodiest gender battle of our time.

Tambo Andersen who compares Hjort’s style to Roy Andersson’s unique absurd universe, says the rising writer/director epitomises the type of films - across fiction/non-fiction - that she wants to produce: highly artistic works, with an urgency to be told. “When I first saw Jonas’ graduation film [from the National Film School of Denmark] In a Month, I immediately saw his unique film language and was blown away by it,” says the producer who was also keen to break away from “the many socio-realistic films made in Denmark”.

The low budget The Penultimate produced under the DFI’s New Danish Screen scheme, was her first feature project for Tambo Film-set up in 2017 with Peter Hydahl - and her first feature co-production with Norway [Chezville].

The Penultimate which just screened in competition at CPH:PIX last weekend, has travelled to seven international festivals so far. TVCO handles world sales.

Tambo Andersen will start pitching Levitating Skin to financial partners early 2022, based on the final script from Hjort.

The producer is also busy with the major documentary Resorts, co-produced with Denmark’s Bullit Film and Ruben Östlund’s outfit Plattform Produktion in Sweden.

Initiated more than five years ago, the film “is a new take on mass tourism, and the dream of the good life in the sun”. The story follows five people from Denmark, Sweden, German, the UK, who have decided not to go back from their holidays and to stay in Gran Canaria. “The resort is a character in itself and what binds all characters together,” said Tambo Andersen who says “a lot of people will recognise themselves” in these individuals.

The producer says Covid-19 has delayed production but also “added an interesting new layer” to the narrative, through refugees who were added to the ‘regular’ clients at the resort during the pandemic.

Filming will continue in 2022 and delivery is set for later next year. The film was co-financed by the Danish and Swedish film institutes, TV2, Denmark, SVT, YLE, The Guardian, and Nordisk Film and TV Fond. Negotiations are underway with sales agents.

Tambo Andersen is also co-producing the Danish project Kaspar to be directed by Piotr Winiewicz for Makropol’s Mads Damsbo. The project is described as ‘the world’s first artistic documentary made by a machine’. It will be pitched at the IDFA Forum 2021 (November 22-24).

Tambo Film’s projects also include the first official Danish/Chinese co-production Blood and Water by Jianjie Lin, which picked a Torino Film lab co-production award in 2018.

Tambo Andersen said she will also extend her collaboration with Nordic Talents winner Thora Lorentzen whose six-part Absolute Beginners just won a Prix Europa for Best Documentary TV series and inspired the producer to develop other youth-oriented fiction and non-fiction works.