Danish star Trine Dyrholm takes on the “bad mom” trope in “Birthday Girl,” which has its world premiere at the Zurich Film Festival, where a girl’s 18th birthday party goes horribly wrong.
Directed by Michael Noer, it sees her character, Nanna, trying to impress estranged daughter (“As in Heaven” breakout Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl) with a cruise to the Caribbean. But when the girl is assaulted, and no one believes her, Nanna needs to step it all the way up.
“Birthday Girl” was produced by Matilda Appelin and Rene Ezra for Nordisk Film Production, with TrustNordisk handling sales.
“I saw her as a mother who wants to be her daughter’s girlfriend. They are on the biggest party boat she could find, because they haven’t seen each other that much and she wants to make up for all that. She is fighting for this closeness and then they share this terrible experience,...
Directed by Michael Noer, it sees her character, Nanna, trying to impress estranged daughter (“As in Heaven” breakout Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl) with a cruise to the Caribbean. But when the girl is assaulted, and no one believes her, Nanna needs to step it all the way up.
“Birthday Girl” was produced by Matilda Appelin and Rene Ezra for Nordisk Film Production, with TrustNordisk handling sales.
“I saw her as a mother who wants to be her daughter’s girlfriend. They are on the biggest party boat she could find, because they haven’t seen each other that much and she wants to make up for all that. She is fighting for this closeness and then they share this terrible experience,...
- 9/28/2023
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Pilou Asbaek stars in ‘Before It Ends’ as a headmaster whose high school is turned into a refugee camp.
TrustNordisk has signed key deals on two buzzy Danish films: Anders Walter’s Before It Ends and Michael Noer’s upcoming Birthday Girl.
Second World War drama Before It Ends has sold to Twelve Oaks Pictures for Spain. The film was released in Denmark last month. It is based on the true story of a high school headteacher, played by Pilou Asbaek, whose school is turned into an internment camp for German refugees in 1945.
It is one of three shortlisted titles...
TrustNordisk has signed key deals on two buzzy Danish films: Anders Walter’s Before It Ends and Michael Noer’s upcoming Birthday Girl.
Second World War drama Before It Ends has sold to Twelve Oaks Pictures for Spain. The film was released in Denmark last month. It is based on the true story of a high school headteacher, played by Pilou Asbaek, whose school is turned into an internment camp for German refugees in 1945.
It is one of three shortlisted titles...
- 9/13/2023
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Michael Noer directs the suspense drama about a dream vacation gone wrong.
TrustNordisk has closed new deals on Michael Noer’s Birthday Girl for Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Plaion) and Benelux (Cherry Pickers).
Screen can reveal the first image from the film, which stars Trine Dyrholm and Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl. The suspense drama is about a mother, her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friend celebrating a birthday on a cruise ship to the Caribbean. On the first evening, the dream vacation turns into a nightmare and the mother takes justice into her own hands.
Noer’s past films include Before The Frost,...
TrustNordisk has closed new deals on Michael Noer’s Birthday Girl for Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Plaion) and Benelux (Cherry Pickers).
Screen can reveal the first image from the film, which stars Trine Dyrholm and Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl. The suspense drama is about a mother, her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friend celebrating a birthday on a cruise ship to the Caribbean. On the first evening, the dream vacation turns into a nightmare and the mother takes justice into her own hands.
Noer’s past films include Before The Frost,...
- 11/1/2022
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
Michael Noer directs the suspense drama about a dream vacation gone wrong.
TrustNordisk has closed new deals on Michael Noer’s Birthday Girl for Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Plaion) and Benelux (Cherry Pickers).
Screen can reveal the first image from the film, which stars Trine Dyrholm and Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl. The suspense drama is about a mother, her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friend celebrating a birthday on a cruise ship to the Caribbean. On the first evening, the dream vacation turns into a nightmare and the mother takes justice into her own hands.
Noer’s past films include Before The Frost,...
TrustNordisk has closed new deals on Michael Noer’s Birthday Girl for Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Plaion) and Benelux (Cherry Pickers).
Screen can reveal the first image from the film, which stars Trine Dyrholm and Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl. The suspense drama is about a mother, her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friend celebrating a birthday on a cruise ship to the Caribbean. On the first evening, the dream vacation turns into a nightmare and the mother takes justice into her own hands.
Noer’s past films include Before The Frost,...
- 11/1/2022
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
Nordish planning local release for March 2023.
TrustNordisk has boarded international sales for Birthday Girl (working title), a cruise ship-set suspense drama from Danish director Michael Noer starring Trine Dyrholm.
The cast also includes Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl (As in Heaven) and Herman Tømmeraas (Shame).
René Ezra (Queen Of Hearts) and Matilda Appelin (A Perfectly Normal Family) produce for Nordisk Film Production. The film wrapped shooting on April 22 and is being readied for a March 2023 launch through Nordisk.
Birthday Girl is about a mother, her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friend celebrating a birthday on a cruise ship to the Caribbean.
TrustNordisk has boarded international sales for Birthday Girl (working title), a cruise ship-set suspense drama from Danish director Michael Noer starring Trine Dyrholm.
The cast also includes Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl (As in Heaven) and Herman Tømmeraas (Shame).
René Ezra (Queen Of Hearts) and Matilda Appelin (A Perfectly Normal Family) produce for Nordisk Film Production. The film wrapped shooting on April 22 and is being readied for a March 2023 launch through Nordisk.
Birthday Girl is about a mother, her teenage daughter and her daughter’s friend celebrating a birthday on a cruise ship to the Caribbean.
- 5/2/2022
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
TrustNordisk has boarded suspense drama Birthday Girl, directed by Michael Noer and led by Danish star Trine Dyrholm. The company will handle international sales rights on the feature about a mother’s persevering quest for justice.
Noer, who co-wrote Birthday Girl (working title) with Jesper Fin, is known for such films as 2018’s Before The Frost, which won the Tokyo Special Jury Prize, and his 2010 debut feature R, a Dragon Award winner for Best Nordic Film in Goteborg. His English-language debut was with the 2017 remake of the classic adventure epic Papillon starring Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek.
One of Denmark’s best-known and most lauded actresses, Dyrholm won the Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear for Thomas Vinterberg’s 2016 The Commune and boasts such credits as Queen Of Hearts, Love Is All You Need and In A Better World. Recently, she’s been seen in crime series Face To Face (Forhøret...
Noer, who co-wrote Birthday Girl (working title) with Jesper Fin, is known for such films as 2018’s Before The Frost, which won the Tokyo Special Jury Prize, and his 2010 debut feature R, a Dragon Award winner for Best Nordic Film in Goteborg. His English-language debut was with the 2017 remake of the classic adventure epic Papillon starring Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek.
One of Denmark’s best-known and most lauded actresses, Dyrholm won the Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear for Thomas Vinterberg’s 2016 The Commune and boasts such credits as Queen Of Hearts, Love Is All You Need and In A Better World. Recently, she’s been seen in crime series Face To Face (Forhøret...
- 5/2/2022
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
After highlighting the most overlooked films of 2021, today we put our spotlight on those that need a home in the first place: movies we loved on the festival circuit—from Berlinale, SXSW, Sundance, TIFF, NYFF, Rotterdam, and beyond—still seeking U.S. distribution.
For acting also as a 2021 retrospective, we hope that highlighting these titles spurs some distributor interests and a release in the next twelve months. Make sure to follow us on Twitter for the latest distribution updates. As we move into 2022, one can also track our upcoming festival coverage here.
We should note that The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, Taming the Garden, and Liborio nearly made the cut, but they’ll get a digital premiere on Mubi this month.
Ali & Ava (Clio Barnard)
It’s so rare to find a romance between two middle-aged characters in which the main conflict is just baggage of past relationships and past hurt.
For acting also as a 2021 retrospective, we hope that highlighting these titles spurs some distributor interests and a release in the next twelve months. Make sure to follow us on Twitter for the latest distribution updates. As we move into 2022, one can also track our upcoming festival coverage here.
We should note that The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, Taming the Garden, and Liborio nearly made the cut, but they’ll get a digital premiere on Mubi this month.
Ali & Ava (Clio Barnard)
It’s so rare to find a romance between two middle-aged characters in which the main conflict is just baggage of past relationships and past hurt.
- 1/3/2022
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Blue Moon (Crai Nou) by Romanian director Alina Grigore won the Golden Shell at the 69th San Sebastian Film Festival whose top awards were swept by female filmmakers and actors.
For the first time, the film festival a gender neutral acting award. The Best Leading Performance prize was shared. Jessica Chastain was honored for her portrayal of televangelist Tammy Faye Messner in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. The other winner was 16 -year-old Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl, star of the Danish film As in Heaven (Du som er i himlen). The film’s Tea Lindeburg was named Best Director.
Other major female winners included Tatiana Huezo, whose Prayers for the Stolen (Noche de fuego) took the prize for Best Latin American film, Claire Mathon, Best Cinematography winner for Undercover (Enquête sur un scandale d’état) and Lucile Hadzihalilovic whose film Earwig was recognized with the festival’s special prize.
The sole...
For the first time, the film festival a gender neutral acting award. The Best Leading Performance prize was shared. Jessica Chastain was honored for her portrayal of televangelist Tammy Faye Messner in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. The other winner was 16 -year-old Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl, star of the Danish film As in Heaven (Du som er i himlen). The film’s Tea Lindeburg was named Best Director.
Other major female winners included Tatiana Huezo, whose Prayers for the Stolen (Noche de fuego) took the prize for Best Latin American film, Claire Mathon, Best Cinematography winner for Undercover (Enquête sur un scandale d’état) and Lucile Hadzihalilovic whose film Earwig was recognized with the festival’s special prize.
The sole...
- 9/26/2021
- by The Deadline Team
- Deadline Film + TV
Other winners included Earwig, Jessica Chastain, Tea Lindeburg and Terence Davies.
A debut feature by Romanian director Alina Grigore, Blue Moon has won the Golden Shell award for best film at the 69th edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Ssiff).
The victory adds another woman director as winner of a festival’s main prize following the Palme d’Or win at Cannes for Julia Ducournau’s Titane and the Venice Golden Lion triumph for Audrey Diwan’s Happening.
Other awards in Ssiff’s main competition included a special jury prize for Earwig, by Lucile Hadzilhalilovic; the Silver Shell...
A debut feature by Romanian director Alina Grigore, Blue Moon has won the Golden Shell award for best film at the 69th edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Ssiff).
The victory adds another woman director as winner of a festival’s main prize following the Palme d’Or win at Cannes for Julia Ducournau’s Titane and the Venice Golden Lion triumph for Audrey Diwan’s Happening.
Other awards in Ssiff’s main competition included a special jury prize for Earwig, by Lucile Hadzilhalilovic; the Silver Shell...
- 9/25/2021
- by Elisabet Cabeza
- ScreenDaily
Female directors and actors reigned supreme at tonight’s San Sebastian Film Festival awards ceremony, with the Romanian actor-turned-director Alina Grigore taking the Golden Shell for Best Film for her intimate debut feature “Blue Moon.” The film, a raw realist study of a young woman attempting to free herself from an abusive rural household, was an unexpected winner, besting a number of higher-profile auteur films in the festival’s main competition. Yet a full spectrum was covered: At the opposite end of the celebrity scale, Jessica Chastain was one of two Best Leading Performance winners for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.”
This was the second year in a row that a first-time female filmmaker took the festival’s top prize. Last year, Georgian writer-director Dea Kulumbegashvili swept the board for her debut “Beginning,” which won the Golden Shell in addition to Best Director, Actress and Screenplay. Kulumbegashvili returned to the...
This was the second year in a row that a first-time female filmmaker took the festival’s top prize. Last year, Georgian writer-director Dea Kulumbegashvili swept the board for her debut “Beginning,” which won the Golden Shell in addition to Best Director, Actress and Screenplay. Kulumbegashvili returned to the...
- 9/25/2021
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
The director talks taking inspiration from ‘Carrie’, Islam and motherhood.
Danish director Tea Lindeburg’s feature debut As In Heaven – which receives its European premiere in the main competition at San Sebastian Film Festival today (September 19) – provides an unflinching look at the brutality of motherhood, as told through the eyes of a young teenage girl named Lise (Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl), living in Denmark’s countryside in the late 1800s.
Across the space of a single day, we see Lise’s life change forever when the girl, who is the eldest of a large brood of children, sees her mother...
Danish director Tea Lindeburg’s feature debut As In Heaven – which receives its European premiere in the main competition at San Sebastian Film Festival today (September 19) – provides an unflinching look at the brutality of motherhood, as told through the eyes of a young teenage girl named Lise (Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl), living in Denmark’s countryside in the late 1800s.
Across the space of a single day, we see Lise’s life change forever when the girl, who is the eldest of a large brood of children, sees her mother...
- 9/19/2021
- by Mona Tabbara
- ScreenDaily
Lise (Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl) couldn’t be happier now that she knows her mother’s (Ida Cæcilie Rasmussen’s Anna) determination has successfully overcome her father’s (Thure Lindhardt’s Anders) objections about sending her to school. It’s the late 1800s after all. A big reason why a farming family such as theirs has so many children is to work the land. Sending off the eldest at fourteen isn’t therefore conducive to their home’s machinery—especially since Anders has no qualms with leaving the daily chores to his sister, mother, daughters, and servants while leaving for hours on end. If Lise had anyone else to thank besides her mother for the miracle that is her impending emancipation, it would therefore have to be God. Unfortunately, God’s will has never been purely optimistic.
Based on the 1912 novel by Danish author Marie Bregendahl, writer/director Tea Lindeburg...
Based on the 1912 novel by Danish author Marie Bregendahl, writer/director Tea Lindeburg...
- 9/10/2021
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
Title is Danish filmmaker Tea Lindeburg’s debut feature.
LevelK has boarded international sales rights to Danish filmmaker Tea Lindeburg’s debut feature, As in Heaven, which has been confirmed for Toronto’s Discovery section and will also screen in the main competition at San Sebastian.
Writer/director Lindeburg has previously worked in television and is the creator and writer of the Danish Netflix production Equinox.
As in Heaven follows 14-year-old Lise, the eldest of her siblings, who experiences the harsh reality of farm life in the 19th century. She is poised to become the first in her family to go away to school,...
LevelK has boarded international sales rights to Danish filmmaker Tea Lindeburg’s debut feature, As in Heaven, which has been confirmed for Toronto’s Discovery section and will also screen in the main competition at San Sebastian.
Writer/director Lindeburg has previously worked in television and is the creator and writer of the Danish Netflix production Equinox.
As in Heaven follows 14-year-old Lise, the eldest of her siblings, who experiences the harsh reality of farm life in the 19th century. She is poised to become the first in her family to go away to school,...
- 7/28/2021
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
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...
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...
- 11/30/2020
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
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,...
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,...
- 3/26/2020
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.