07/11/2012 - After The Society of Fine Arts, Anders Rønnow Klarlund has decided to end his career in Danish film, which he says is "more concerned about money than about art"

"Probably you can draw a line and ask whether Danish film lost its soul somewhere on the journey between Bille and Bier's Oscars (Bille August's Pelle the Conqueror (1987), Susanne Bier's In a Better World [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2010))," said Danish 41-year-old director Anders Rønnow Klarlund, who has decided to end his career in Danish film.

"We have created a system, where producers and distributors treat writers and directors as if they were spearheading the market economy, while telling the politicians they could not survive for a day without state support." Klarlund attacked the industry and his own production company, Zentropa Entertainments, for being "more concerned about money than about art".

Originally working for radio and as a television producer, Klarlund directed four episodes of Danish popular TV series Taxi before his feature debut, The Eighteenth (1996), followed by Possessed (1999), both awarded on the international festival circuit. In 2007, he directed the satirical drama, How to Get Rid of Others [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Interviewed by Danish film magazine Ekko, which also distributes the film, Klarlund's The Society of Fine Arts - "a film about art and terror" - follows a group of German underground artists blowing up Berlin's zoological museum as "a piece of art" (as Karlheinz Stockhausen declared the 9/11 attacks "the greatest work of art there has ever been".)

Inspired by French director Chris Marker's La Jetée the film, starring Jana Klinge, Christian Blümel, Susanne Wuest and Daniel Zillmann is composed of thousands of stills, manipulated in a 3D space - "exactly as I think a film should be in 2012: new, pushing the boundaries". Having published several books, Rønnow Klarlund will now concentrate on his career as an author.