01/03/2017 - The Danish director’s short Silent Nights did not win an Academy Award, but he returns from Hollywood to start preparing his first feature, Death Drives an Audi

Danish director Aske Bang and his Danish producer, Kim Magnusson, of M&M Productions – who has been nominated for an Oscar six times and has won twice (with Anders Thomas Jensen’s Election Night in 1998 and Anders Walter’s Helium in 2013) – did not cash in on their Oscar nomination for Best Short Film with Silent Nights during Sunday’s Academy Awards gala. But Bang is returning to Denmark to start preparations for his first feature, Death Drives an Audi, an adaptation of Danish author Kristian Bang Foss’s 2012 novel, for which he received the European Union Prize for Literature. As was the case with Silent Nights, he will work with Danish screenwriter Ib Kastrup on the screenplay.

While Bang has not yet received funding from the Danish Film Institute, Danish commercial pubcaster TV2 has given script support, and is willing to finance the project with Danish production company Zentropa Entertainments and Danish major Nordisk Film Distribution.

“Bang has both talent and potential, and Death Drives an Audi is a fabulous project, which we are very pleased to be part of,” said Katrine Vogelsang, head of fiction at TV2. “The screen adaptation of Foss’s novel looks like a tremendous feature, and we are very interested in backing films by new Danish directors,” added Frederik Honoré, CEO of Nordisk Film Distribution.

“Bang’s shorts are always on the top of the critics’ charts; now he has also represented Denmark at the Oscars. He can give Danish cinema a lift both artistically and audience-wise, so hopefully the Danish Film Institute will feel like participating in this project as well as having the opportunity to do so,” concluded producer Jonas Bagger, of Zentropa. 

Death Drives an Audi follows a former advertising manager who, after a social faux pas, has taken a job as a disabled carer looking after a sick man, Waldemar. Their daily life is a study in hopelessness. But one day, they find themselves on a road trip to Morocco to see a healer, which turns into a race with death.