Five years ago you were still on the benches of the Danish Film School. Since then you've had a meteoric career and your two writing collaborations with Thomas Vinterberg - Submarino and The Hunt - have had the privilege to compete in Berlin and Cannes. But how did Thomas and your paths actually cross for the first time?
A few days before I graduated from the Danish Film School, Thomas' producer Morten Kaufmann who had been teaching at the school put Thomas in touch with me. I was very fortunate to work on Submarino and to develop my writing skills with Thomas who taught me a lot.
How did you collaborate on The Hunt?
We worked equally on the script. It was not ‘this is my film and you write a certain way for my project'. It was a full partnership. After Submarino, we immediately decided to work on another project together. We spent a lot of time thinking about themes, stories that would be worth telling again to an audience. We spent 4-5 months like this, until we found the thread for this story about a witch hunt. We were interested in showing how an entire community can turn against someone very quickly.
Unlike many films where the audience is not sure until the very end if the suspect is guilty or not of what he is being accused of, we wanted to let the audience know from the very beginning that Lucas [Mads Mikkelsen] is innocent and show how the community still turns against him. Here in Denmark, we're perceived as an ideal country and according to some polls we're the happiest country in the world. We wanted to show that there is evil around anybody's corner.
What were your inspirations?
I was inspired by Fanny & Alexander in the depiction of a family, of a confined and suffocating environment. I did a lot of research as well and spoke to child psychologists.
As a father how do you think you would have reacted in such a circumstance, if a teacher at your kid's kindergarten was accused of child molesting?
I know I could easily be infected by such a strong feeling of anger if my son came back from school with a bruise. I would start asking questions. While working on Submarino, I had just become a father and Thomas and I started to talk about the responsibility of being a father. It is an empowering feeling and you could do anything to defend your child.
After your prison drama R, your second film as a director A Hijacking takes place again in a confined environment - on a boat that's been hijacked by Somali pirates and in a room at the shipping company in Denmark where the boss and hijacking experts negotiate with the pirates. Why did you go back to this specific four-wall setting?
When in a confined environment, you are forced to change as a character, and that's a great premise for telling a story. I felt it would be interesting to do it again. Half of the film is shot on the ship on the Indian Ocean and several real seamen worked on the film. I just added some acts. In Denmark we isolated the guys from the shipping company in a small room where the negotiations take place, again to see them change as the dramatic storyline evolves.
Why did you choose this particular subject of sea piracy?
I think it is fascinating. When you go to the coast of Somalia you see big commercial vessels. Thousands of people are sitting there as hostages and nobody seems to do anything about that. That would never happen with airline companies. You would never imagine one thousand people sitting in a desert somewhere and nobody doing anything about it. Anyway, that's what happens with those sailors who are hijacked in the film. They are just normal people, fathers, whose job is to bring boxes around the world, coffee from Africa to Europe, cars from Japan to the US, oil from Africa to China. No matter what political reasons the Somalis have to do it, the victims are still innocent sailors just doing a job.
How was the shooting on the Indian Ocean?
We had a small crew. We rented a big vessel for the period and all the crew from the ship. The strange thing is that the boat we rented had been hijacked a year before for three months. The whole crew had been hostage in a similar situation. So we were lucky to find real victims who had gone through that experience themselves. It made the filming even more real.
Pilou Asbæk plays the lead in both R and A Hijacking and he also appears in Borgen, just like Søren Malling who plays the boss of the shipping company in your film. Was it essential for you to have these accomplices who worked with non-professionals? You needed to have people you could trust?
Yes you've just answered the question. Before even writing a word I went to talk to Pilou.
I feel like when I talk to Thomas Vinterberg I'm a drummer in his big rock band. We play stadium concerts, it's huge and I just try to keep the rhythm in the background. Then I have my own little jazz band on the side with guys I trust with my life. With Pilou I knew him so well, like Søren Malling, my photographer Magnus Jønck, my editor Adam Nielsen. All those guys I have worked with before. It's risky to go to the coast of Somalia and shoot there, but I trusted them. I wouldn't have done it without them.
Tell me about Borgen, was it a surprise for you that it became such an international success?
I was involved since Day 1. We thought it was a very Danish series, dealing with Danish politics. We thought maybe the Swedes or Norwegians would be interested. But Borgen's international success shows that if you tell a good story it can click with audiences around the world. If you have the identification with characters, then it can work anywhere. It's still a western story about career women trying to have a family as well. It's also about political scandals, which is everywhere, no matter how your system or democracy works, it will also be in the tabloids. The fact that we could make people look behind the closed doors and into the home of these politicians was very exciting. But still, it was a big surprise for me when the series became such an international success.
Do you prefer writing for film or television, or do you enjoy doing both at the same time?
I like both very much. For the last five years I've done 20 episodes of Borgen and four features, plus I've directed two films. I won't do that again. Right now I'm writing a new script with Thomas and another project for myself. I have a wife; my son is almost three so I want to be there for him. I've decided that when I will write for TV again, I will do it full time and nothing else. That might be in a while because I really enjoy doing film. There is something magical about the 90 minute format in a cinema. For TV you have to compete with 30 other channels and people keep zapping from one to the other. But if you buy a ticket for the cinema, the film has to be really bad for people to get up and leave. So you have the 100% attention of the audience. I really like that. I feel now in my life, I want to become a better screenwriter for feature film.