News

Ahead of Cannes market, Scandinavia’s leading sales agent TrustNordisk has released a fresh still from Pernille Fischer Christensen’s drama “Unraveled” (“Vores Løfte”) which just wrapped filming for Nordisk Film Production Denmark.

A Berlinale regular, from her 2006 breakthrough prize-winning debut “A Soap” to the Astrid Lindgren biopic “Becoming Astrid” (2018), picked up by Music Box for the U.S., Christensen’s “Unraveled” marks her anticipated return to the silver screen after her TV drama immersion that notably took in co-directing Dr’s acclaimed “Cry Wolf.”

The upcoming Danish pic stars Danica Curcic as Maria, a former elite swimmer and famous sports commentator whose life unravels when her beloved husband Mikael (Lars Ranthe from “Another Round”), her former coach and father of their daughter, is suddenly suspected of sexual abuse. Sparking the scandal and media interest is the revelation in an upcoming book, of a young girl’s misguided infatuation for her swimming coach,...

Viaplay Content Distribution has closed the first raft of deals for its ambitious action drama film “Stockholm Bloodbath” directed by Mikael Håfström.

Ahead of Viaplay’s official streaming premiere in 2024, “Stockholm Bloodbath” will be distributed in the Nordics by Scanbox Entertainment. It will roll out in Denmark on Jan. 18th and in Sweden and Norway on Jan. 19. Splendid Film, meanwhile, has acquired all rights for Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland.

“Stockholm Bloodbath” is part of Viaplay Content Distribution’s roster which will be unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival to international buyers. The company will present new and exclusive material from the film.

Set in 1520, “Stockholm Bloodbath” explores a dark chapter in Sweden’s history, which saw the infamous massacre of nearly 100 nobles and civilians in the Swedish capital. The film follows Anne (Sophie Cookson) and her foster sister Freja (Alba August) as they seek revenge on the men who...

Lorne Balfe, the Grammy Award winning score composer of “Dark Knight,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” has joined the top notch key crew of “Stockholm Bloodbath,” Mikael Håfström’s epic adventure movie produced by Viaplay Studios.

Balfe, whose prestigious credits also include “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” “His Dark Materials” and “Genius,” is creating the score for “Stockholm Bloodbath” in collaboration with Steffen Thum, an up-and-coming German composer.

The female-led epic adventure movie, which marks Viaplay’s second English-language film original following “Hilma,” lensed in Prague and Budapest, and wrapped shooting two weeks ago. The prominent cast includes Sophie Cookson (“Kingsman: The Golden Circle”), Claes Bang, Emily Beecham (“Cruella”) and Alba August (“Becoming Astrid”). Adam Pålsson (“Young Wallander”), Matias Varela (“Assassin’s Creed”), Ulrich Thomsen (“The Blacklist”) and Jakob Oftebro (“Black Crab”) complete the cast.

Set in 1520, “Stockholm Bloodbath” explores a dark chapter in Sweden’s history, which saw the infamous...

Sam Productions’ owners are Søren Sveistrup, Adam Price and Studiocanal.

Denmark’s Sam Productions and Meta Film, the companies headed by CEO Meta Louise Foldager Sørensen, are expanding into Sweden.

Maria Dahlin will spearhead the Swedish business, as Sam and Meta ramp up their investments in Swedish features and series.

Sam Productions’ owners are Søren Sveistrup, Adam Price and Studiocanal.

“Søren, Adam and I have a sincere deep love for Swedish stories; I think our previous productions clearly showed that,” said Foldager Sørensen, pointing to past Swedish collaborations including Border, The Wife and Aniara. She added that the companies planned...

Astrid and Lilly face off against a monster that forces its victim to relive their worst childhood memory on loop (until they're trapped forever).

The strength of the girls was put to the test with this harrowing monster, and their emotions ran high.

Astrid & Lilly Save the World Season 1 Episode 5 quickly proved to become the best episode of the season.

The body part of the week, of course, featured some of the usual

Astrid and Lilly had to retrieve the monster's "A-Borg," also known in our dimension as its eye.

However, defeating the creature and retrieving its eye proved the most challenging feat yet.

They didn't just have to defeat the monster in person, but first, they must beat it within the warped childhood memory.

The monster forced its victims to experience their most traumatizing childhood memory (all while making it More traumatizing).

For Lilly, her horrible friend breakup with...

While cheesy, campy, and all over the place, Astrid and Lilly Save the World manages to be entertaining.

Astrid & Lilly Save the World Season 1 Episode 1 introduces us to our title characters, along with the monsters they have to defeat -- in the form of bullies and actual monsters.

The lead actresses dedicate themselves to their roles and make a messy and lackluster script fun.

Jana Morrison and Samantha Aucoin play Astrid and Lilly (respectively), two girls who constantly get bullied for their body type and quirkiness.

A significant aspect of the hour set the scene of a horrible high school environment riddled with bullies and mean girls.

Their raw emotion coming from the effects of the bullying is portrayed wonderfully in the script and the performances.

They are happy and very close friends, but the ridicule takes a toll.

Their friendship proves to be one of the best aspects displayed in the show.

Resident Alien has a number of treats in store for fans – from more octopus action to guest stars and shapeshifting – when it returns to Syfy and USA for Season 2 in 2022.

Set to return Jan. 26, Resident Alien is based on the Dark Horse comics and follows a crash-landed alien named Harry (Alan Tudyk) whose secret mission is to kill all humans. In season two, Harry is once again stranded on Earth where he must confront the consequences of having failed his people’s mission to destroy the human race. On his new quest to protect the people of Earth, Harry struggles to hold on to his alien identity as his human emotions grow stronger by the day.

On Thursday, during NBCUniversal’s TCA segment, showrunner and EP Chris Sheridan joined stars Tudyk, Alice Wetterlund, Sara Tomko and Corey Reynolds to dish the deets the series’ sophomore season, including Alex Borstein’s involvement.

The Norwegian International Film Festival kicked off on Saturday its 49th edition in the coastal town of Haugesund, an occasion for industry filmgoers and Nordic film aficionados to discover new projects from the region’s top talent.

One of festival’s highlights is its Next Nordic Generation– a selection of the best graduation short films from various Nordic film schools.

10 shorts were selected this year made by creatives perceived as some of the region’s filmmakers of tomorrow.

Three of the films come from Westerdals, Kristiania University College in Oslo, Norway, another trio from Aalto Elo Film School in Helsinki, Finland, and two each from Hdk-Valand at the University of Göteborg, Sweden and The National Film School of Denmark in Copenhagen. This means that – with the exception of Iceland – all countries from the Nordic region are represented.

This selection was made by a jury of Håkon Skogrand, a former program...

NBCUniversal is going big to prove that cable still has a future in a streaming world.

The company has unveiled 33 new originals, a number of which have previously been announced and revealed by Deadline, as part of a mega order book across Bravo, E!, Oxygen, Syfy and USA Network.

A new spinoff of Below Deck, as revealed by Deadline last month, a winter spinoff of Summer House, a Dick Wolf-exec produced unscripted crime series and a Jason Biggs game show are some of the highlights of the orders, which are dominated by non-scripted programming.

Bravo’s Below Deck Adventure is set in in the glacial fjords of Norway and will premiere in early 2022, Summer House Winter Charm, the Bravo reality series’ first spinoff, will come this fall and Jason Biggs’ Cash at Your Door, produced by the team behind Cash Cab, has been ordered by E!

Other non-scripted series include Final Moments,...

Denmark’s Maja Jul Larsen has bested strong opposition to take this year’s Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize for Dr’s “Cry Wolf,” Larsen’s first series as a creator and lead-writer.

The win, announced at a Göteborg Festival TV Drama Vision award ceremony on Tuesday, goes to one of the rising stars on Denmark’s screenwriting scene who in a relatively short career – she graduated from Denmark’s National Film School in 2007 – has run an up an impressive curriculum working on “Borgen,” “Follow the Money” and “The Legacy.”

With limited series “Cry Wolf,” a family drama and procedural, she faced the large task of breathing life and a sense of entertainment into an eight-part series that works at times as an exposé of the rigidity and potential failing of Denmark’s social welfare system.

That’s achieved by focusing on one case: Holly, 14, writes a vivid school essay...

“She’s not a damsel that needs rescuing — she’ll also be working hard,” explains Emma D’Arcy about her character Astrid on “Truth Seekers.” “You don’t often get female characters who get to be as brave and as kick-ass and as front-footed as Astrid,” D’Arcy adds in her exclusive interview with Gold Derby (watch the video above).

She elaborates, “She’s got nothing to lose, do you know what I mean? And that’s really charming and exciting and somehow, Astrid’s femininity isn’t a defining aspect for that character and that’s really encouraging because parts like that are still pretty limited and I also really like the fact that big questions about where Astrid’s come from are part of the underlying story.”

SEEour interview with D’Arcy’s co-star Malcolm McDowell.

Amazon released the eight-episode first season on their Amazon Prime Video streaming platform in October.

Dr Sales, the distribution division of Denmark’s public broadcaster Dr, has closed a raft of deals on “Cry Wolf,” a searing social drama created by Maja Jul Larsen (“Borgen”) and co-directed by Pernille Fischer Christensen (“Becoming Astrid”).

The eight-episode limited series tells the intense and emotional story of a teenage girl who has written a vivid school essay detailing her stepfather’s physical assaults. The parents deny the accusations and take their own daughter to court, creating some ambiguity as to whether this abuse occurred as described. The show is set against the backdrop of Denmark’s rigid child protection process.

Since premiering on Oct. 11 on Dr’s primetime slot, “Cry Wolf” has drawn a consistent average of over a million viewers.

Dr Sales, which is taking part in the virtual Content London market, has sold the show to France (Salto), Telefonica (Spain), Sbs (Australia), Belgium (Betv), Telepool (Germany...

Contrasting human paradoxes and complexities against the cold rationality of Scandinavian civic institutions, the Danish series “Cry Wolf” presents a searing social drama built from an initially ambiguous premise.

Presented as part of Series Mania’s Buyer’s Showcase after having been selected for the festival’s international competition, the Dr Drama-produced series tracks the cascading aftershocks once a 14-year-old girl writes an essay detailing her stepfather’s physical assaults.

While the veracity of those claims – at least for the first few episodes – remains unclear, the accusations set off a sequence of events that builds with grim inevitability. Beleaguered social worker Lars (Bjarne Henriksen) soon gets involved, placing young adolescent Holly (Flora Ofelia Hofman Lindahl) and her younger brother into foster care, all while the girl’s parents (Christine Albeck Børge and Peter Plaugborg) strenuously deny the charges, eventually taking their own daughter to court.

“I was fascinated by social services,...

Director May el-Toukhy tackles a subject that has not yet been explored and is frightening in the possibilities it reveals to us as women assume positions of power and authority. The troublesome specter of exploitive female sexuality is also elaborated upon in the Dutch Oscar submission, ‘Instinct’.

Two highly developed Western European nations, Denmark and The Netherlands, take female sexuality to extremes here in ways we only saw before as men’s terrain with such films as Last Tango in Paris or In the Realm of the Senses.

My initial reaction to both films was a sort of shame, as if somewhere deep inside of me, I understood the impulse that impelled both these women to venture into forbidden zones of action, but wished it had not depicted it so graphically. It would take a psychiatrist to explain the impulse in human nature that makes us enter dangerous sexual territories.

Becoming Astrid, a critically acclaimed feature detailing the life Swedish author Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking), hits DVD and Digital March 9 via Music Box Films.

Featuring Alba August (Netflix’s The Rain) as Lindgren, the feature was inspired by Danish writer/director Pernille Fischer Christensen’s fateful glance at a picture. “One day I saw in a newspaper a photo [...]

The post ‘Becoming Astrid’ Starring Alba August Hits DVD And Digital In March appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.

The producers of a new series about Napoleon Bonaparte to be helmed by Agnieszka Holland will pitch the project to potential partners in Berlin at the Co-Pro Series event, which is part of the Berlinale Co-Production Market and the Drama Series Days. The Co-Pro event has a strong pedigree, with “Babylon Berlin” and “Valkyrien” among the series pitched at earlier editions.

Holland’s latest film, “Mr. Jones,” is in competition in Berlin. Her TV credits include HBO series “House of Cards” and “Burning Bush.” The “Napoleon” project will focus on the cult of personality that the titular leader engendered, with echoes of modern-day political strong men. Writing team Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris, whose credits include “Bulletproof Monk” and “Robin Hood,” will pen the series.

The Co-Pro Series format sees scripted shows pitched to an audience of potential partners before breakout meetings and networking events.

The 2019 lineup is heavy on Scandi series.

Danish co-writer/director Pernille Fischer Christensen's soothing and relaxed biopic Becoming Astrid (a.k.a. Unga Astrid) is a touching account of a youthful Astrid Lindgren, the woman that evetually would become a renowned author of children's books worldwide. Lindgren would be better known as the creator behind the immensely popular Pippi Longstocking book series. Christensen ("Someone You Love") spins a sedate, lyrical coming-of-age tale that showcases the turbulent times of a young girl whose written creativity in womanhood would ultimately shape the imagination and encourage the inspiration of children across the global landscape. Although devoutly conventional, Becoming Astrid is still rather spell-binding in its quieted account of a curious yet gently disillusioned rural youngster whose futuristic boundaries would be an adventurous window to countless kiddies in different...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

A finite number of audiences on both coasts will get the chance to see Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma beginning Thanksgiving weekend. Netflix’s anticipated black-and-white feature, which is a Spirit Award nominee and won the Golden Lion at Venice will have the vast majority of its audiences view what some have called a masterpiece through the service. Roma is the second of three Netflix films — along with the Coen brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which opened this month, and Susanne Bier’s Bird Box — to get a rare pre-streaming theatrical release as the company looks to boost awareness for its awards-season fare.

Fellow Venice, Telluride and New York film festival pic The Favourite from Fox Searchlight begins its theatrical run Friday in four New York and L.A. locations. Starring Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, the period drama should be a heavy draw for audiences during the holiday.

Becoming Astrid (Unga Astrid) Music Box Films Reviewed for Shockya.com by: Harvey Karten Director: Pernille Fischer Christensen, Screenwriterd: Kim Fupz Aakeson, Pernille Fischer Christensen Cast: Alba August, Maria Bonnevie, Trine Dyrholm, Henrik Rafaelsen, Magnus Krepper, Björn Gustafsson Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 11/14/18 Opens: November 23, 2018 Pippi Långstrump, Pippi Longstocking as we know her […]

The post Becoming Astrid Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

"What happens next in the story?" Music Box Films has debuted the official Us trailer for a Swedish-Danish drama titled Becoming Astrid, which first premiered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. The film tells the story of Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren (author of the world famous Pippi Longstocking series), who grew up in a small town, started working for the local newspaper there, fell in love with the much older editor of that newspaper, gets pregnant with him, and decides to leave him to raise the child on her own. This actually is the true story of Astrid, the film tells it with a great amount of elegance and sensitivity. Alba August stars as Astrid and she's easily the best part of this. The cast includes Björn Gustafsson, Trine Dyrholm, Maria Bonnevie, Magnus Krepper, and Henrik Rafaelsen. I first saw this at Berlinale and it's quite a good...

Music Box Films has acquired U.S. rights to Christian Petzold’s “Transit,” which world-premiered in competition at Berlin and is set to play at the Toronto and New York film festivals.

“Transit,” which stars Franz Rogowski (“In the Aisles”) and Paula Beer (“Frantz”), was adapted from Anna Seghers’ World War II novel of the same name. An examination of modern France, it takes place in Marseilles just after the German invasion and follows Georg, a German refugee who takes on the identity of a recently deceased author, Weidel. Variety called it a film of “piercing emotional acuity.”

A well-established German filmmaker, Petzold also directed “Barbara,” which won the Berlinale’s Silver Bear in 2012; “Phoenix,” which won the Fipresci Prize at San Sebastian; and “Yella.”

“We are great admirers of Christian’s films, and are thrilled to finally be working with him,” said Music Box Films President William Schopf, who...

David Dencik (Top of The Lake: China Girl), Jonas Karlsson (The Snowman) and Alba August (Becoming Astrid) will star in Quick.

David Dencik (Top of The Lake: China Girl), Jonas Karlsson (The Snowman) and Alba August (Becoming Astrid) will star in Quick for director Mikael Håfström (Evil), which TrustNordisk is selling.

Quick is among the new projects backed by Film i Väst, Scandinavia’s leading film fund, which is based in Trollhättan in West Sweden.

Quick, produced by Helena Danielsson for Brain Academy, is described as a “character-driven journalistic thriller and psychological drama.” Director Håfström told Screen, “Thomas Quick was Sweden’s worst serial killer,...

Music Box Films acquires Astrid Lindgren biopic.

TrustNordisk has announced that Pernille Fischer Christensen’s Berlinale title Becoming Astrid has been sold to Music Box Films for Us distribution.

Other new sales include Spain (Caramel Films), Poland (Aurora Films) and Israel (Shoval Film Production).

Becoming Astrid stars Alba August as a young Astrid Lindgren (who would later write the Pippi Longstocking books), and examines a little-known chapter in the author’s life when she gave birth to her son and had to give him up.

The cast also includes Trine Dyrholm, Magnus Krepper, Maria Bonnevie and Henrik Rafaelsen.

Anna Anthony...

Music Box Films has struck a deal with Scandi sales dynamo TrustNordisk for U.S. rights to Pernille Fischer Christensen's Berlin biopic Becoming Astrid. The well-received drama charts the early years of renowned children's author Astrid Lindgren, who went on to write the best-selling Pippi Longstocking stories. The film zones in on one seminal event that shaped the Swedish writer’s life and how, despite the expectations of her time and religious upbringing, she decided to…...

This is the story of Astrid Lindgren, a Swedish woman who went on to write the massively popular series of books about Pippi Longstocking. Becoming Astrid is a feature film about the teenage years of Astrid's life in Sweden. She was born in 1907, and in her youth struggled to find her independence and place in the small town of Näs where she was raised. From the moment the film started, I had a good feeling about it, with the score and the opening scene of an elderly Lindgren reading cards that children have sent her at her home. The rest of the film takes place in the 1920s in Sweden, telling the true story of a young Astrid and her love for an older newspaper man. It's a lovely, engaging tale of an intelligent woman who strived to be different. Directed by Danish filmmaker Pernille Fischer Christensen, Becoming Astrid stars Alba August as Astrid.