27/09/2013 - After one win and two nominations for the Academy Award as Best Foreign-Language Feature, Vinterberg’s Mads Mikkelsen starrer is Denmark’s 2014 submission

“The Hunt [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
film profile] is a film with a huge international potential, and we would be overly modest if we did not admit that it is a strong hand we play out with,” said managing director of the Danish Film Institute and chairman of the Danish Oscar committee Henrik Bo Nielsen, which yesterday (September 26) decided to submit Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s film for the Oscar nomination as Best Foreign-Language Feature.

“Danish film is in an extremely privileged position, and Academy members have a good eye to us because we have in recent years produced films of high quality,” added Nielsen, referring to Susanne Bier’s In a Better World [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which won the Oscar in 2010, her After the Wedding [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sisse Graum Jørgensen
interview: Susanne Bier
film profile] and Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mikkel Boe Følsgaard
interview: Nikolaj Arcel
film profile], which were nominated in 2006 and 2012.

Selected from a shortlist with Michael Noer’s Northwest [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michael Noer
film profile] and US director Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary, The Act of Killing [+see also:
trailer
film profile], The Hunt was launched in competition in Cannes to collect three awards, including Best Actor for Mads Mikkelsen in the lead. Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm won a European Film Award for the script.

“Vinterberg’s finest work since The Celebration,” said Magnolia Pictures president Eamonn Bowles, when he signed for US distribution. Denmark’s TrustNordisk has so far licensed the film to 103 territories; when it was finally released in Denmark six months after Cannes, it became this year’s best-grossing local film with 672,000 admissions.

Produced by Sisse Graum Jørgensen and Morten Kaufmann for Zentropa Entertainments, The Hunt tells the story of a 40-year-old man (Mikkelsen) in a small provincial town, who has finally recovered from a tough divorce, when a five-year-old kindergartener drops a remark accusing him of abusing her.