29/08/2012 - Danish producer Regner Grasten has signed Danish director Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis for two biopics – one about a horse, the other about a famous author

Danish director Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis (photo), whose feature debut This Life (aka The Hvidsten Group) is this year's local best-seller, so far exceeding 765,000 tickets, have been signed by the film's producer Regner Grasten, of Regner Grasten Filmproduktion, to helm not one but two features for him during the next two years.

Originally, she had accepted to direct Tarok – Dannebrog on Four Legs, about Denmark's most famous trotting horse. Between 1975-1980, he won 111 races out of 156, and in 2010 he came first in a poll designating the greatest sporting events of all time, organised by Danish public broadcaster DRTV.

Filming Tarok... in 2013, Grasten had to delay the production of Tanne – A Family Saga by a year, at which time Danish director Bille August who was attached to the movie would not be available. Instead, he agreed with Bjarup Riis that she would direct the film, which was presented as a new project at New Nordic Films during the 40th Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund.

Scripted by Peter Asmussen, and packaged on a €4 million budget, Tanne follows the life of Danish author Karen Blixen-Isak Dinesen till 1913, when at 28 she boards the ship for Africa where she would live for 18 years. Danish director Gabriel Axel's adaption of Babette's Feast won Denmark’s first Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Feature in 1988; US director Sydney Pollack's film from her novel Out of Africa took seven in 1986.