Danish Film Institute backs new scheme for low-budget features
- Morten BH’s Anti and Frederik Meldal Nørgaard’s Villads from Valby are the first of up to 24 projects to be realised in the next three years
To support low-budget productions – meaning films that were specifically conceived as low-budget, as opposed to standard films made cheaper – the Danish Film Institute will subsidise 12 to 24 new projects on €0.4-€0.8 million budgets over the next three years.
“We are already happy to be funding the first two, promising features,” said the institute’s head of film support, Claus Ladegaard, having given the greenlight to Danish directors Morten BH’s Anti and Frederik Meldal Nørgaard’s Villads from Valby.
After a feature (Kolbøttefabrikken, 2014) and multiple TV series, Morten BH (for Boesdal Halvorsen) will shoot a coming-of-age story set in the 1990s graffiti milieu, scripted by Jannik Tai Mosholt. It is about Simon and Frede, who have always been friends, and who agree that life is not about having a plan.
When Simon is kicked out of school, they decide to go to Copenhagen to make graffiti. Simon joins the Chaos group, which is impressed by his talent, but Frede does not really fit in. Christian Potalivo and Caroline Blanco will produce Anti for Miso Film, with a cast including Stefan Hjort, Casper Kjær and Oscar Giese. Shooting will begin on 14 September for a spring 2016 release.
Adapted by Nørgaard from Danish author Anne Sofie Hammer’s series of children’s books, Villads from Valby is a family film about a boy with a vivid imagination that adults often do not understand, so he regularly violates the invisible "adult rules" for what you can and cannot do. His mother is very much concerned.
Nørgaard also plays Villads’ father in a cast that includes Iben Dorner, Patricia Schumann, Jesper Riefensthal and Kristian Ibler. The film - budgeted at €0.8 million - will be produced by Regner Grasten for Regner Grasten Filmproduktion and will also receive backing by Danish public broadcaster DR. The shoot will take place for three weeks in August, and the domestic premiere is scheduled for Christmas this year.
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