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PRODUCTION Denmark

The Purity of Vengeance up next in the Department Q franchise

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- CANNES 2017: Christoffer Boe will direct Zentropa’s fourth instalment in the thriller series, which has so far sold 2.2 million tickets in Denmark

The Purity of Vengeance up next in the Department Q franchise
Director Christoffer Boe

Danish filmmaker Christoffer Boe has been signed up to direct The Purity of Vengeance [+see also:
trailer
interview: Elliott Crosset Hove
film profile
]
, the fourth Department Q thriller based on Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s novels, it was announced at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday (21 May) by Denmark’s Zentropa Entertainments.

The previous titles in the series, Mikkel Nørgaard’s The Keeper of Lost Causes [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Eugenio Mira
film profile
]
 (2013) and The Absent One [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
 (2014), and Hans Petter Moland’s A Conspiracy of Faith [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(2015), have all been local blockbusters, selling 2.2 million tickets, and Danish international sales agency TrustNordisk has licensed them worldwide. 

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“The time has come for the big finale [at least with Zentropa], and what better way to portray it than with Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Fares Fares in the company of Boe, one of the biggest talents in Danish film?” said Zentropa producer Louise Vesth, who will stage the €5.2 million production scripted by Nikolaj Arcel (who has penned all four), Bo Hr Hansen and Nørgaard, with shooting scheduled for the beginning of next year. 

Lie Kaas and Fares play the leads as detective superintendent Carl Mørck and his sidekick Assad in the Copenhagen Police’s Department Q, specialising in “cases of special focus” or cold cases. This time, they are called to an old Copenhagen apartment where construction workers have found three mummified corpses sitting around a dinner table, and a fourth, empty seat.

Boe’s feature debut, Reconstruction, won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes in 2003, his Offscreen [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
 (2006) received the Young Cinema Award at Venice, and Everything Will Be Fine [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 (2010) was selected for the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. Most recently, his Sex, Drugs and Taxation [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
took 300,000 local admissions and three Robert Awards from the Danish Film Academy.

While Zentropa is soon to leave the department, Nordisk Film will enter. The Danish major has acquired the rights to the remaining novels by Adler-Olsen, who has published another two and is working on finishing a complete series of ten. He had expected to be asked to write, or at least co-write, the scripts and have an influence on the style and casting, but was in fact not asked to participate.

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