Bavaria delivers Bornedal’s Evil internationally

by Annika Pham

14/04/2009 - Ole Bornedal’s latest thriller, Deliver Us from Evil [trailer], which opened on April 3 in seventh place in the domestic top ten for Danish distributor SF Film, has been picked up by Bavaria Film International for world sales.

The Thura Film production is described by Bornedal as an allegory on xenophobia, good and evil, crime and punishment.

Thorsten Ritter, managing director for the Munich-based sales company, said: “I am a big fan of Ole Bornedal. He tries to merge film entertainment for wider audiences with stylistic and cinematic ambition, which is quite rare in Europe. You get a lot of subtext and social commentary from his films, in particular in this one, but he always aims for the audience and is never complacent.”

Bavaria has had a lot of success with Nordic films over the past couple of years, from Finland’s Black Ice [trailer, film focus], shown in competition in the 2008 Berlinale, to Sweden’s Let the Right One In [trailer, film focus], the country’s biggest export last year with over 50 territories sold.

Erik Poppe’s Norwegian title Troubled Water [trailer] has also attracted a lot of interest from international buyers. Territories sold so far include Benelux, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Poland, Portugal and France. Ritter said he is currently also in negotiations on a couple of Swedish films.