Teddy Bear to open this year’s Danish Wave showcase in Moscow

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

09/05/2012 - Danish director Mads Matthiesen’s feature debut, Teddy Bear [trailer], which won for for Best Director in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, will open the 2012 Danish Wave Film Festival in Moscow, which unspools from May 10-15 at the capital’s leading arthouse cinema, Kino 35mm.

Matthiesen and his lead actor - Danish international bodybuilder champion Kim Kold, 140 kilos of muscle, whose biceps measure 53 cms and who can bench press 1,000 kilos – will meet the Russian audiences after the screening. The film tells the stoy of a young man, a bodybuilder who lives alone with his dominating mother; in his search for true love he travels to Pattaya to find his bride.

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“The programme is very good this year - Denmark is one of the strongest film nations worldwide, and Russian distributors have always had eye for Danish films which have contributed to the arthouse culture,” said Cool Connection’s Alexey Layfurov, who organises the event with the Danish Film Institute and the Danish Embassy in Moscow.

Today Russia is an important market for, among others, Danish director Lars von Trier’s films – and, according to Layfurov in the DFI, “when his and his Dogme colleagues’ first movies came out in the late 1990s, there were few arthouse screens in Russia, so they helped create the interest in foreign indie product which is now widely on show”.

After the festival premieres, three of the Danish films will continue on general Russian theatrical release, including Teddy Bear, Ole Christian Madsen’s Superclásico (Superclasico) [trailer], and Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair [trailer, film focus], which won two Silver Bears at the recent Berlin International Film Festival.