The Shooter finds more goals in Olesen's remake of 1977 thriller

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

28/01/2013 - “Scarily enough, it is more relevant today than when it was written,” said Annette K. Olesen of her new thriller-drama, which will be launched at the Göteborg Film Festival

Danish director Annette K Olesen, whose latest feature Little Soldier [+see also:
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film profile] (2008) was launched in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, will screen her new feature The Shooter [+see also:
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film profile] at Sweden’s Göteborg International Film Festival (which runs through February 4) prior to its February 28 domestic release through Nordisk Film Distribution.

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Olesen, who has directed several episodes of the Danish TV series Borgen/Government, has found material in Danish author Anders Bodelsen’s screenplay, which he wrote with Danish director Franz Ernst for Ernst-Tom Hedegaard’s film The Marksman (1977), with Jens Okking in the lead.

“The original story was written before the assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme, before terrorism and climate change. When we were writing the script, Copenhagen was flooding, and Anders Behring Breivik’s rampage at Utøya took place. Scarily enough, The Shooter is more relevant today than 35 years ago,” Olesen said.

The new script by Åke Sandgren, Lars K Andersen and Michael W Horsten describes the five days when Copenhagen was held in a panic grip by an intelligent activist and former elite shooter (Kim Bodnia), who takes to arms when a woman journalist (Trine Dyrholm) writes about the government’s broken promises in an environmental question.

Co-starring Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Kristian Halken, Lars Ranthe, Jens Jørn Spottag and Bent Mejding, The Shooter was produced by Sandgren, for Nordisk Film Production, on a €2.5 million budget, with Danish broadcaster TV2 on board. Denmark’s TrustNordisk handles international sales.

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