07/08/2013 - After three years in the US making TV series and Dead Man Down, Danish director Niels Arden Oplev returns to Denmark for Race Walking

Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, whose most recent US television series, the pilot for Under the Dome - written by Stephen King and produced by Steven Spielberg – chalked up 13 million viewers for CBS, has returned to Denmark, where he is shooting Race Walking (working title - pictured), his first local feature since 2008 (Worlds Apart [+see also:
trailer
film profile]). 

Arden Oplev, who spent three years in America after his international break with Millennium 1 - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Niels Arden Oplev
interview: Søren Stærmose
film profile] (2009), signed episodes for the Unforgettable television series, before he directed Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace and Dominic Cooper in the thriller Dead Man Down (which has so far recouped €13.5 million of its €22.5 million production costs).

Set in a Danish provincial town in 1976, Race Walking – the adaption of Danish actor and theatre director Morten Kirkskov’s debut novel – is filmed on the island of Funen, starring newcomers Villads Bøye, Frederik Winther Rasmussen and Kraka Donslund Nielsen, as well as Anders W Berthelsen (The Killing), Sidse Babett Knudsen (Borgen) – Berthelsen and Knudsen pictured with the director - Pilou Asbæk (A Hijacking [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tobias Lindholm
film profile]) and Jens Jørn Spottag.

Arden Oplev met Kirkskov to discuss an independent sequel to his 2006 first feature film, We Shall Overcome [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. Kirkskov told him about his childhood and early youth, and in the end they agreed that he should write his own book, which was published in 2010 to critical acclaim. With a script by Bo hr Hansen, the film follows 13-year-old Martin, who is going through puberty and is in love with Kristine, but also attracted to Kim, his best friend, when he suddenly loses his mother.

Produced with a €3 million budget by Thomas Heinesen and Rasmus Videbæk for Nordisk Film Production, Race Walking will be released in the spring 2014 by Nordisk Film Biografdistribution. 

Photo credit: Bjørn Bertheussen