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ROMEFILMFEST Out of competition

Susanne Bier’s dangerous liaisons

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After the Wedding [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sisse Graum Jørgensen
interview: Susanne Bier
film profile
]
(Efter Brylluppet) by Susanne Bier is a simultaneously understated and intense family drama made in the style we have come to expect from Danish films of recent years, and from a director today considered to be one of the leading exponents of Scandinavian cinema today.

However, the "dangerous liaisons" at the heart of the film that representing Denmark in the race for the nomination for the 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar are just the basis of a structure that is a reflection on life choices.

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"After the Wedding also depicts the relationship between the East and West, between India and Europe, humanitarian aid organisations, the anxiety that pervades our society and, above all, what happens when one makes plans in life without considering the consequences. I wanted to contemplate failed expectations", said the director, who flew in to the RomeFilmFest just a few days after finishing shooting of her first US film, Things We Lost in the Fire, starring Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro.

At the heart of After the Wedding is Jacob, a 40 year-old who runs an orphanage in India that is being forced to close for lack of funds. Jacob accepts returning to Denmark to discuss a $4m donation offered by a rich businessman on the condition that he attend the financier’s daughter’s wedding. At the ceremony, Jacob discovers that the girl’s mother is his great love from the past.

The film marks the third screenwriting collaboration between Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen (director of Adam’s Apples [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anders Thomas Jensen
interview: Mads Mikkelsen
interview: Tivi Magnusson
film profile
]
, see Focus), after (Open Hearts [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
and Brothers [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, a features a cast of actors well-known in Denmark: Mads Mikkelsen, Rolf Lassgård and Sidse Babett Knudsen.

The film, shot in Denmark and India on a €3m budget, will be released in Italy on December 22 by Teodora Film. It will also come out in Germany and France between February and March, 2007.

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(Translated from Italian)

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