13/02/2013 - Danish director Kristian Levring is preparing The Salvation, a €9.4 million US western with Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen in the lead, to shoot in South Africa

The fourth signatory of the 1995 Dogme manifesto (with Lars von Trier, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen and Thomas Vinterberg), Danish director Kristian Levring (photo), will shoot his next feature as “an homage to the classic western, inspired by the Nordic sagas”.

Announced at the European Film Market in Berlin by Danish international agency TrustNordisk, which started presales for the film, The Salvation is currently casting in the US, UK and France, after Levring has given the lead role in the €9.4 million to Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen. It will lense on locations in South Africa on an eight-week schedule from early April.

Scripted by Danish Oscar-winning writer Anders Thomas Jensen (In A Better World [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), who also worked with Levring on The King Is Alive and Fear Me Not, the English-language production (with some Danish dialogue) will be staged by Danish producer Sisse Graum Jørgensen for Zentropa Entertainments, with South Africa’s Spiers Film and the UK’s Forward Films. Nordisk Film Distribution will handle local release. 

Labelled “an epic tale of revenge, lost love and greed in the 1870s’ America,” The Salvation follows a peaceful settler (Mikkelsen), who kills the murderer of his family, thus unleashing the fury of his brother, a notorious gang leader. Betrayed by his corrupt and cowardly community, the now vengeful hunter slays the outlaws and cleanse the town from its black heart.

Levring, who achieved a European Film Award in 2008 with his Dogme brothers for their Outstanding European Achievement in World Cinema, lived in France and Switzerland and is now based in London. Besides features he directs commercials, which have garnered him more than 20 Danish and international prizes.