Five Danish films to SXSW

The documentaries "Good Things Await", "The Visit" and "The Look of Silence," the short "Teenland" and the animated short "Whole" are selected for the South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.

Phie Ambo's documentary about Niels Stokholm's biodynamic farm, "Good Things Await" will be shown in the SXGlobal section for international features and documentaries. The film opened nationally in September and has attended festivals like CPH:DOX, IDFA and Berlin.

Framegrab from "Good Things Await"

Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Look of Silence" and Michael Madsen's "The Visit" are selected for the Festival Favorites section, showing highlights from previous premieres at festivals worldwide. "The Visit" had its world premiere at Sundance in January. "The Look of Since" has since its premiere at Venice, where it received the Grand Jury Prize and FIPRESCI Prize, screened at a number of festivals including Telluride, Toronto, New York, CPH:DOX, IDFA, Göteborg and Berlin. The film recently won the Danish film critic's Bodil Award and Danish Film Academy's Robert Award for Best Documentary.

Teenland

Framegrab from "Teenland"

Marie Grahtø's graduation film from the independent film school Super16 will have its world premiere in the Narrative Shorts Competition.

Sally is locked up at Teenland. A prison-like institution for teens who are so fucked up emotionally that they have developed supernatural powers. The mission is to normalize the misfit teens, and Sally accepts the premise that she is sick and abnormal. Everything changes when Sally encounters power sociopath Ting- e –ling, who convinces Sally that she must use her skills and dare to lose control. This is what teenagers do. The rebellion has begun.

"Teenland" is produced by Amalie Lyngbo Hjort.

Whole

William Reynish's graduation film from The National Film School of Denmark, "Whole" is selected for the Animated Shorts Competition. 

Mira has a heartache and feels empty inside. Her friend attempts to fill out Mira’s emptiness with vodka and parties, but as Mira meets the 500 year old shaman Uhlrik, a more holistic solution arises: Mira must find her power animal to regain her inner strength. But after being put into a drum induced trance, Mira meets something entirely unexpected.

"Whole" is produced by Lina Flint for the National Film School of Denmark.

Watch the trailer

The Visit

Michael Madsen, 2015

"This film documents an event that has never taken place - man's first encounter with intelligent life from space", but ever since the invention of radio, humans have been sending signals into space, announcing their existence to other civilizations. With unprecedented access to the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, the military, and experts from leading space agencies, the film explores a first contact scenario, beginning with the simplest of questions: Why are you here? How do you think? What do you see in humans that we don't see in ourselves?

A journey beyond a terrestrial perspective, revealing the fears, hopes, and rituals of a species forced not only to confront alien life forms, but also its own self image.

Good Things Await

Phie Ambo, 2014

Niels is one of the last idealistic farmers in the agricultural country of Denmark. He makes some of the world's finest products, praised by the consumers, prized by the world's best restaurant, NOMA in Copenhagen, and nursed in harmony with the universe. But Niels' ways of farming in accordance with the planets and the primal instincts of the animals are not too popular with the authorities.

The Look of Silence

Joshua Oppenheimer, 2014

Through Joshua Oppenheimer's footage of perpetrators of the 1965 Indonesian genocide, a family of survivors discovers how their son was murdered, as well as the identities of the killers. The documentary focuses on the youngest son, an optometrist named Adi, who decides to break the suffocating spell of submission and terror by doing something unimaginable in a society where the murderers remain in power: he confronts the men who killed his brother and, while testing their eyesight, asks them to accept responsibility for their actions. This unprecedented film initiates and bears witness to the collapse of fifty years of silence.