Today, IDFA announced that the Danish film 'About a Hero' has been selected to open the 37th edition of the prestigious festival.
‘About a Hero’
The film starts when a local factory worker named Dorem Clery dies under mysterious circumstances, and our narrator, Werner Herzog, travels to Getunkirchenburg to investigate his perplexing death. But Herzog is not who he seems, and the film is not what we expect. The documentary merges fiction and reality through an AI-generated film script combined with real interviews to investigate the impact of artificial intelligence on art and humanity.
The fictional narrative is based on a script written by Kaspar, an AI trained on Werner Herzog's body of work, while the documentary aspect reflects on the contentious nature of this practice. As Herzog himself puts it, "A computer will not make a film as good as mine in 4,500 years."
The film's director, Piotr Winiewicz, is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and is known for working at the intersection of cinema and performative art. He often blurs the lines between fiction and reality, a theme he continues to explore in ‘About a Hero’. Though Winiewicz has previously collaborated with documentary filmmakers like Mads Brügger and Joshua Oppenheimer, this marks his debut feature as a director.
'About a Hero' is produced by Rikke Tambo Andersen, Mads Damsbo, and Sam Pressman for Tambo Film and Pressman Film, with support from the Danish Film Institute, FilmFyn, and DR. International sales rights are held by DR Sales.
Danish films at IDFA 2024
In addition to ‘About a Hero’, the Danish film ‘Life and Other Problems’ by Max Kestner will be screened out of competition in the Best of Fest program. This program showcases prize-winners, audience favourites, and high-profile titles from the international festival circuit.
‘Life and Other Problems’ deals with some of the biggest questions in life: What is life? Does consciousness exist? Where does love come from? And not least: How is everything connected? All these questions were sparked 10 years ago when the news that Marius the giraffe was put down by the Copenhagen Zoo went viral from Hollywood to Chechnya. With curiosity and an open mind, Kestner embarks on a philosophical journey around the world in search of answers.
The film is produced by Vibeke Vogel for Bullitt Film and supported by the Danish Film Institute, the Nordic Film & TV Fund, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, and TV 2 Denmark, among others.
Minor co-productions
In addition to these two Danish films, four co-productions with Danish involvement are featured in the Best of Fest program:
- ’The Brink of Dreams’ by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir (Egypt, France, Denmark, Qatar, Saudi Arabia)
Danish co-producer: Mette-Ann Schepelern for Magma Film.
- ‘Songs of Slow Burning Earth’ by Olha Zhurba (Ukraine, Denmark, Sweden, France)
Danish co-producer: Anne Köhncke for Final Cut for Real. - ‘Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other’ by Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet (United Kingdom, USA, Denmark)
Danish co-producer: Signe Byrge for Final Cut for Real. - ‘We Are Inside’ af Farah Kassem (Lebanon, Qatar, Denmark)
Danish co-producer: Patricia Drati for Good Company Pictures.