20/11/2002

After making her highly acclaimed Dogma film, Italian for Beginners, Lone Scherfig became one of Denmark’s hottest directors. The melancholy drama was a huge international and domestic success that won a Silver Bear in Berlin and went on to become the most popular Danish film ever released in America. The international interest generated by Italian for Beginners resulted in Danish production house, Zentropa, finding a Scottish co-production partner for Scherfig’s new film, Wilbur begar selvmord (Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself). Initially, Scherfig and her writing partner, Anders Thomas Jensen wrote the script in Danish, and intended on using the same cast as Italian for Beginners. However, Zentropa decided that the Danish actors had become too expensive and that is how the screenplay ended up being in a Scottish setting, and the film made by a Scottish crew. Wilbur begar selvmord, a romantic comedy about the trials and tribulations of two unmarried brothers running a bookshop, took Euros 101,957 during its opening weekend when 16,993 tickets were sold.