Meanwhile, in Danish film …

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Chicago and more

At the Chicago Film Festival's awards ceremony on 23 October, Rúnar Rúnarsson's Sparrows received the Silver Hugo in the New Directors Competition, a selection of first and second feature films making their US premieres in Chicago. The director and the team behind the Danish-Icelandic-Croatian drama took home the top award in the same category at the Warsaw Film Festival on 17 October. "For it's masterfully and poetically crafted journey of an anti-hero, up to an unforgettable humanistic ending," the Warsaw jury stated. Read interview Reality is a Grayscale

Chicago Film Festival 15-29 October

Here, there and everywhere

Land of Mine, Martin Zandvliet's drama about an untold story ensuing the end of WWII, is showing in the main competition at Tokyo Film Festival. The film is in high demand and is spanning festival audiences from, as mentioned, Tokyo to Sao Paulo (22 October through 4 November, including a big Nordic focus), Lübeck (read update), and Thessaloniki. Domestic premiere is on 3 December. Read interview The Untold Story

Tokyo Film Festival 22-31 October

Attending "Land of Mine"'s screening and press meeting on Friday 23 October in Tokyo: producer Mikael Rieks of Nordisk Film, director Martin Zandvliet and lead actor Roland Møller. Photo: TIFF

US premiere for Oscar candidate

A War, selected in September as Denmark's entry to run in the foreign-language Oscar race, will be making its North American premiere at AFI Fest, the American Film Institute's annual film event in Hollywood. The film is selected for World Cinema, a programme showcasing the "most acclaimed international films of the year." Director Tobias Lindholm and actor Pilou Asbæk will be present at the festival. The two Danish co-productions Rams and Mountain are also on the bill for this year's festival. Read interview Consequences of War

AFI Fest 5-12 November 

The Méliès celebrates fantastic films

Anders Thomas Jensen's comedy Men & Chicken received a Special Mention at Sitges Fantastic Film Festival on 17 October. Furthermore, the film is nominated for the annual Méliès d'Or Prize, named after the great French pioneer of fantastic films and special effects, to be announced in Trieste on 6 November by the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation, a network of 22 film festivals from 16 countries. 

Méliès Competition 6 November

Gotham in New York

Joshua Oppenheimer's Danish-produced The Look of Silence is one of five nominees for the award for Best Documentary at the 25^th Gotham Independent Film Awards, the first honors of the film awards season, to be presented in New York City on 30 November.

Gotham Awards 30 November

European Film Awards naming nominees

The European Film Awards announced the three nominations in the category European Animated Feature Film 2015, one of which is Tomm Moore's 2015 Oscar candidate Song of the Sea, co-produced by Danish animation studio Nørlum. Sybilla Tuxen and Thora Lorentzen's This Place We Call our Home and the Danish-Finnish Listen by Hamy Ramezan and Rungano Nyoni are among the 15 nominees in the short film category.

The final nominees in the documentary and feature film categories are still to be named. These will be announced on 7 November, with a handful of Danish titles on the official shortlists: For documentaries, Good Things Await by Phie Ambo, Democrats by Camilla Nielsson and The Look of Silence by Joshua Oppenheimer, and for feature films Anders Thomas Jensen's Men & Chicken.

European Film Awards 12 December

Life in a Commune

Catch a first glimpse of Trine Dyrholm and Ulrich Thomsen in this brand new trailer for Zentropa Productions and Thomas Vinterberg's The Commune which will be premiering in Denmark on 14 January. The story is based on a play that Vinterberg made for Burgtheater Wien about his years growing up in a communal home in North Copenhagen. Additional cast members are Fares Fares ("The Absent One") and Lars Ranthe ("The Hunt").

Vinterberg scripted the film together with his longstanding writing partner Tobias Lindholm, who also co-wrote the script to 2014's Oscar nominee "The Hunt" and is now taking his first steps in that same race as the director of Denmark's 2015 submission "A War."

Watch trailer

A War

Tobias Lindholm, 2015

Company commander Claus Michael Pedersen and his men are stationed in an Afghan province. Meanwhile, back in Denmark, Claus' wife Maria is trying to hold everyday life together with a husband at war and three children missing their father. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy crossfire and in order to save his men, Claus makes a decision that has grave consequences for him - and his family back home.

Sparrows

Rúnar Rúnarsson, 2015

The films follows Ari, 16, who has been living with his mother in Reykjavik and is suddenly sent back to the remote Westfjords to live with his father Gunnar. Here he has to navigate a difficult relationship with his father, and he finds his childhood friends changed. In these hopeless and declining surroundings, Ari has to step up and find his way.

Land of Mine

Martin Zandvliet, 2015

Taking place in May 1945 only a few days after the end of the war, the film tells the story of how a group of German prisoners of war were brought to Denmark and forced to disarm the two million land mines that had been scattered along the West Coast by the German occupying forces. In charge of the enfeebled young men performing the dangerous task is Sergeant Carl Leopold Rasmussen. Like so many of his fellow Danes, he has a deep hatred for the Germans after having suffered five years of hardships during the occupation.

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.

Democrats

Camilla Nielsson, 2014

Over the course of more than three years director Camilla Nielsson has been up close in the inner circles of politics in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. With the process of creating Zimbabwe's new constitution as the film's narrative backbone, DEMOCRATS tells the unique story of the political elite in Zimbabwe fighting the battle over the founding principles defining the country's possible future.

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.

Men & Chicken

Anders Thomas Jensen, 2015

Gabriel and Elias are brothers, but very different from one another. Gabriel is a worn down university professor and Elias is masturbating fulltime, he is a man, whose only concern is women and trivial knowledge. During a lecture Gabriel receives a phone call telling him that their father has died.

The Commune

Thomas Vinterberg, 2016

Erik and Anna are a couple of academics with a dream. With their daughter Freja, they set up a commune in Erik's huge villa in an upmarket district of Copenhagen. With the family at the centre of the story, we are invited into their dream of a real commune.

Song of the Sea

Tomm Moore, 2014

After their mother's disappearance eight-year-old Ben and his four-year-old sister Saoirse are sent to live with Granny in the city. When they resolve to return to their home by the sea, their journey becomes a race against time as they are drawn into a world Ben knows only from his mother's folktales. But this is no bedtime story: these fairy folk have been in our world far too long.