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News list
2008-06-30
2008-03-10
2007-10-15
New festival landscape 2008
2007-10-15
Watch the Festival TV
2007-10-04
Winners of The Golden Swans 2007
2007-09-29
Gala Award Show 2007
2007-09-28
Kim Fupz Aakeson to receive an Honorary Award
When Copenhagen International Film Festival rolls out the red carpet for the Gala Awards Ceremony on Saturday, 29 September, the Danish screenwriter Kim Fupz Aakeson will be presented with an Honorary Award.
2007-09-24
Sweepingly beautiful costumes and Israeli Night
Read about today´s events - Talkie with Manon Rasmussen and Israeli night
2007-09-23
Meet the director of Heartbeat Detector
come to the Turkish Night, see Ingmar Bergman´s masterpiece Shame and get behind the camera with Spielberg
2007-09-22
The Black Pimpernel - one of the real world´s heroes
Copenhagen International Film Festival proudly invites you to the preview screening of The Black Pimpernel on Sunday, 23 September.
2007-09-21
Festive gala opening ceremony in Imperial
2007-09-18
Makram Khoury replaces Gillies MacKinnon in the jury
2007-09-17
Spielberg on Spielberg - behind the camera
Copenhagen International Film Festival will be the first festival to screen the brand-new documentary Spielberg on Spielberg, where the audience will have a unique possibility to step behind the camera with the director.
2007-09-13
The festival´s guests
The stars are waiting in the wings for the kick-off on 20 September, when Copenhagen International Film Festival fades up for 10 days of tribute to European films and the capital’s cinemas fill up with world-famous and upcoming film directors and actors.
2007-09-13
New Danish Screen
Copenhagen International Film Festival proudly welcomes you to the premieres of a string of exciting films from New Danish Screen.
2007-09-06
Tribute to Bergman and Renoir
Copenhagen International Film Festival will look back at two of Europe’s great filmmakers, Ingmar Bergman and Jean Renoir.
2007-09-04
This year’s nominations for the Alice Award
Eight films by female directors are this year competing for Copenhagen International Film Festival’s women’s award – the Alice Award.
2007-08-31
Jury 2007
2007-08-30
Patrice Leconte to attend Copenhagen IFF
Patrice Leconte will attend the French Day at Copenhagen International Film Festival.
2007-08-28
Kenneth Branagh to attend Copenhagen IFF
The Oscar-nominated director and actor Kenneth Branagh will attend this year’s film festival.
2007-08-27
This year’s competition films
When Copenhagen International Film Festival fades up for this year’s film event on 20 September, the audience can experience 147 fantastic films. 11 of them will get special attention, namely the films in competition, which compete for the six categories of the festival’s Golden Swan award.
2007-08-23
Israeli film in the competition
Israeli film will play an important role at Copenhagen International Film Festival. This year, the festival’s competition series will feature the Israeli film The Band’s Visit, and the festival has decided to dedicate a whole series to Israeli film.
2007-08-20
This year´s festival is kicked off with The Diving Bell and concluded with Sleuth
Julian Schnabel’s Cannes-award-winning The Diving Bell and the Butterfly will open this year’s Copenhagen International Film Festival, and the 10 days of European film will be rounded off with Kenneth Branagh’s Sleuth.
2007-08-17
Come to the program launch
Copenhagen International Film Festival will launch this year’s program with both a biographical drama and a zombie thriller on Sunday, 2 September.
2007-08-13
New head of BUSTER
Füsun Eriksen has been appointed as the new head of BUSTER and will take up office on 1 September 2007
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Master Classes & Seminars 2006
Master Class with Stephen Frears
Stephen Frears, one of England’s most significant filmmakers, held an exciting master class during the festival. Amongst other, Frears has directed five actresses to an Oscar nomination: Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer (Dangerous Liaisons), Angelica Huston and Anette Bening (The Grifters) and Judy Dench (Mrs. Henderson Presents). He had his feature film debut in 1971 with Gumshoe, starring Albert Finney, but subsequently mostly worked in television until he had his international breakthrough with The Hit (1984), starring John Hurt and My Beautiful Launderette (1985) with Daniel Day-Lewis. In these films, one could see one of the trademarks that have also influenced his later films: a confident portrayal of his characters with an edge of social criticism. Since the 1990s, Frears has been in high demand on both sides of the Atlantic. In his versatile and industrious output he has worked together with a long line-up of film stars, in works as diverse as An Accidental Hero (Dustin Hoffman), Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts), High Fidelity (John Cusack and Iben Hjejle) and, more recently, Mrs. Henderson Presents (Judy Dench and Bob Hoskins). |
 Stephen Frears
Photo: RObin Jørgensen |
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At the master class, extracts were shown from his latest film The Queen with Helen Mirren in the lead role. The film was screened at a preview later the same day. The master class started with one hour’s energetic Q&A, while the second half had a more leisurely pace. For smokers in the audience, however, the highlight was no doubt the interval, where a cigarette-needy Frears puffed away on the audience members’ cigarettes, while both sides could enjoy an informal chat. |
 Stephen Frears
Photo: Robin Jørgensen |
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 Robby Müller
Photo: Carlos S. Alvarez |
Master Class with Robby Müller
The master cinematographer Robby Müller, who was a member of this year’s jury, also made himself available for a master class. Müller worked together with Wim Wenders from his first film in 1969 right up to his breakthrough with Paris, Texas in 1984. After this, Müller started to work for American directors such as William Friedkin (To Live and Die in L.A., 1985) and, not least, Jim Jarmusch (Down by Law, 1986 and Mystery Train, 1989). Robby Müller has also worked with directors as diverse as Alex Cox, John Schlesinger and Barbet Schroeder. In later years, he has continued his fruitful collaboration with Jarmusch and Wenders in films such as Dead Man (1995) and Buena Vista Social Club (1999), and he has also worked with our very own Lars von Trier on Breaking the Waves (1996) and Dancer in the Dark (2000), and with Michael Winterbottom on 24 Hour Party People (2002). Robby Müller is strongly interested in the possibilities offered by new digital technologies.
During the master class, the inquisitive and involved audience got answers from the master to many interesting questions. |
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 Robby Müller
Photo: Carlos S. Alvarez |
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____________________________________________________ Master Class with Ghita Nørby
Ghita Nørby, Denmark’s leading actress and the president of this year’s jury, also held a master class. She had her film debut in 1956 with The Young Have No Time, where she played alongside Frits Helmuth – a highly fertile collaboration that was repeated many times both on the silver screen and on television, amongst other in Kaspar Rostrup’s Oscar-nominated Waltzing Regitze (1989). She has explored practically all genres and has always had a great interest in the technical side of film production.
 Ghita Nørby
Photo: Carlos S. Alvarez |
Throughout the years she has made almost 120 feature films and has worked together with directors such as Erik Balling (Matador), Bille August (The Best Intentions), Lars von Trier (The Kingdom), Jan Troell (Hamsun), Liv Ullmann (Sofie) and Susanne Bier (Freud’s Leaving Home). Most recently, Ghita Nørby has won awards for her role in Per Fly’s The Inheritance and has participated in popular TV series such as Unit 1 and The Eagle. |
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In a conversation with Ole Michelsen (from Bogart), Ghita Nørby looked back at her numerous films and some of the directors she has worked together with. The spellbound audience enjoyed the great diva’s stories from her long career.
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 Ghita Nørby & Ole Michelsen
Photo: Robin Jørgensen |
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 Goran Paskaljevic
Photo: Svetlana Soelvason |
Master Class with Goran Paskaljevic Goran Paskaljevic’s master class offered an insight into a world filled with serious topics, portrayed with a good dose of black humour. The highly controversial and politically active Serbian director, author and producer Goran Paskaljevic, had by 2006 directed no less than 30 documentaries and 13 feature films, and through the years, he has often been a guest at the world’s biggest film festivals – Cannes, Berlin and Venice. His feature film debut Beach Guard in Winter participated in the Competition program in Berlin in 1976, and only two years later The Dog Who Loved Trains won the Golden Bear. In 1992, nationalist powers at home forced Paskaljevic to go into exile in Paris, and he had more and more difficulties to obtain financing for his biting and critical, but also humoristic portrayals of the Balkans. In 1998, he returned to Belgrade and made the incisive and provocative Powder Keg, which is a fantastic film about the conflict in the region. But he once again had to leave the country and only returned after the fall of Milosevic. |
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Since then, Paskaljevic has directed the equally controversial Midwinter Night’s Dream (2004) and this year’s festival saw the European premiere of his latest work, The Optimists.
Paskaljevic showed a lot of commitment when answering questions from the audience and from the Danish director Lotte Svendsen.
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 Goran Paskaljevic & Lotte Svendsen
Photo: Svetlana Soelvason |
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 Eva Novrup Redvall
Photo: Svetlana Soelvason |
New Danish Screen seminar
New Danish Screen, a talent development pool under the aegis of the Danish Film Institute, has offered us a whole host of successful and exciting films in the years leading up to 2006, amongst other Pernille Fischer Christensen’s A Soap, Anders Morgenthaler’s Princess and Christoffer Boe’s Offscreen. These films were highly successful in representing Denmark at the world’s largest film festivals in Berlin, Cannes and Venice respectively. The talent subsidy regime has also given rise to a line-up of interesting short films, of which the six latest projects were presented at this year’s festival. |
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 Vinca Wiedeman
Photo: Svetlana Soelvason |
The seminar tried to highlight how one discovers talent, and which talents should be developed and supported. What kind of stories does the new generation want to tell, and are such stories interesting in the first place? The idea is that New Danish Screen should appeal to fresh thinking, but how does this square with the larger degree of artistic freedom that the filmmakers get under the scheme? These were some of the questions that the festival’s seminar tried to address. |
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The panel consisted of Vinca Wiedemann, who at the time was the artistic director of New Danish Screen, the producer Ib Tardini and the film critic Eva Novrup Redvall. |
 Ib Tardini
Photo: Svetlana Soelvason |
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 The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) |
Carl Th. Dreyer seminar The festival was of the opinion that the films of Denmark’s greatest filmmaker of all times, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889 – 1986), are shown much too rarely on television and in cinemas. Partly through screening his most important works with the best available prints, and partly by hosting a seminar focusing on him, the festival tried to make up for this deficit. The seminar tried to elucidate what it was that made him so special – and why it still is such a great experience to see his films on the silver screen today. |
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Dreyer had his debut in 1912 as a screenwriter for The Brewer’s Daughter, and as a director in 1919 for The President. His major works are, amongst other, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Day of Wrath (1943) and Ordet (1955). The French-produced Joan of Arc turned out to be an economic disaster, however, and film producers turned their backs on him everywhere, even though posterity regards it as one of his finest works.
Dreyer was highly respected in the finer circles of French film and managed to produce films both in France, Germany and Denmark. For Day of Wrath he was nominated for an Oscar and the film gained him recognition in the USA, while the Danish critics gave him the thumbs down, and in the years between 1943 and 1968 he only directed three films in Denmark.
However, Dreyer had an immeasurable influence on many future directors, amongst other Ingmar Bergman and François Truffaut. He still has fans throughout the world, and back in Denmark he is highly esteemed by directors like Lars von Trier and Christoffer Boe.
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 Day of Wrath (1943) |
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The panel members at the seminar were the silent film expert Casper Tybjerg, the director Torben Skjødt Jensen (Carl Th. Dreyer: my metier) and the film historian Peter Schepelern. |
 Peter Schepelern, Torben Skjødt Jensen, Henrik Uth Jensen & Casper Tybjerg
Photo: Svetlana Soelvason |
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 István Szabó
Photo: Robin Jørgensen |
Seminar with the director István Szabó and the producer János Rózsa
The great Hungarian director István Szabó, who was president of the festival’s jury in 2004, has always had a sharp and critical eye for his country’s political past. After making the two English-speaking films Sunshine (1999) with Ralph Fiennes and Being Julia (2004) with Annette Bening, he returned to his own country and language with the razor-sharp drama Relatives (2006), which was shown at this year’s festival. In this film, he once again tackles political topics in a story about a young idealistic prosecutor, who discovers the hard way how easily power corrupts. Szabó has dealt with this subject many times before, not least in his most famous works, such as the Oscar-winning Mephisto (1981) about an actor who works together with the Nazis during the war.
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István Szabó’s producer for the film Relatives, János Rózsa, was also present at the seminar. He is himself a recognised director in Hungary. During the event, clips were shown from the film Relatives, and its highly topical political subject matter was discussed with both the director and the producer. |
 István Szabó & János Rózsa
Photo: Robin Jørgensen |
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 Amos Gitai
Photo: Peter Sebstrup |
Seminar with Amos Gitai
In this seminar, the famous Israeli director Amos Gitai presented his documentary trilogy The House (1979-2005). The trilogy is the story about a house in Jerusalem, and together the three films form a microcosm that reflects many fundamental conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians. The house was abandoned by its Palestinian owner in 1948 and subsequently confiscated by the Israeli authorities. A Jewish-Algerian settler moved into the house in 1956, and in 1979, when the first of the three films was made, a professor was in the process of rebuilding it. In the first film, we follow the construction work – carried out by Palestinian workers – and visit the film’s various owners, with the next two films taking up the story of the house and the world around it. |
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Gitai is known for his highly political films and for his balanced attitude towards the conflict in Israel. In his films, he has often provided the imagery for topics that are seen as controversial in Israel, amongst other in Free Zone with Natalie Portman, which was shown at the festival in 2005. Both House and News From Home / News From House were shown at this year’s festival, and due to the situation in the Middle East, the festival also screened Gitai’s documentary Wadi 1981-1991, about a marriage between an Israeli and a Palestinian.
The seminar presented clips from both House (1979-2005) and News From Home/News From House (2005). The journalist Martin Krasnik moderated the seminar, where the discussion revolved around the portrayal of the Middle East in films.
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 Amos Gitai & Martin Krasnik
Photo: Peter Sebstrup |
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