We Shall Overcome leads Robert nominations

by Annika Pham

20/12/2006 - With a record 16 nominations, Niels Arden Oplev’s We Shall Overcome [trailer], produced by Sisse Graum Jørgensen for Zentropa, leads the race for this year’s Robert Awards (local Oscars), but Pernille Fischer Christensen’s debut film A Soap [trailer, film focus] (see focus), produced by Lars Bredo Rahbek for Nimbus Film, is hot on its heals with 15 nominations.

Both titles, which started their successful festival careers with major awards at the 2006 Berlinale, have been shortlisted by the Danish Film Academy along with 14 other Danish quality productions, illustrating the wealth and depth of Danish cinema today.

In the Best Film category, We Shall Overcome– the biggest Danish hit of 2006 with over 406,000 admissions – will face stiff competition from Susanne Bier’s After the Wedding [trailer, film focus] (the second most popular Danish film of the year, also produced by Graum Jørgensen), and Ole Christian Madsen’s Prague (nearly 180,000 admissions in four weeks), another Nimbus Production.

A trio of upcoming filmmakers given free reign to make challenging films through the Danish Film Institute’s New Danish Screen will also take their chances against them: Fischer Christensen (A Soap), Christoffer Boe ( Offscreen [trailer]) and Anders Morgenthaler ( Princess [trailer]).

In the acting categories, Denmark’s biggest export, Mads Mikkelsen, has been nominated twice for Best Actor, in After the Weddingand Prague, and Trine Dyrholm for Best Actress in A Soap and Best Supporting Actress in Offscreen. Other double nominations in the same category include scriptwriter Kim Fupz Aakeson for A Soap and Kenneth Kainz’s Pure of Heart.

Lars von Trier’s comedy The Boss of it All [trailer] has three chances to win, for Best Script (von Trier), Best Actor (Jens Albinus) and Best Supporting Actor (Peter Gantzler).

Among production outfits, Zentropa Entertainment has by far the most nominations (42 for five films), followed by Nimbus Film (23 for two films) and Fine & Mellow (12 for two films).

The awards ceremony will take place in Copenhagen on February 4, 2007.