29/08/2014 - The largest genre film festival in the US has also selected Anders Morgenthaler’s I Am Here and Hans Petter Moland’s In Order of Disappearance

Danish director Mikkel Nørgaard’s thriller The Absent One [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – the second instalment in the franchise from Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s novels – will have its world premiere at Austin’s tenth Fantastic Fest, the largest genre film festival in the US, this year running from 18-25 September. 

Scripted by Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, and produced by Louise Vesth, Jonas Bagger and Peter Aalbæk Jensen for Zentropa Entertainments – the same team that signed The Keeper of Lost Causes [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Eugenio Mira
film profile], the first in the series, which took 724,509 domestic admissions last year – The Absent One reunites deputy detective superintendent Carl Mørck(Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and his sidekick, Assad (Fares Fares), of Copenhagen Police’s Department Q for “cases of special focus”.

This time they investigate a 1994 murder case, in which two young twins were found brutally murdered in a summer cottage. The police first suspected a group of upper-class students from a nearby boarding school, and closed the case when a local outsider confessed and was convicted. Nordisk Film Biografdistribution will release the film in Denmark on 2 October. 

Danish director Anders Morgenthaler, whose animated feature debut, Princess [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (2006), opened the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, will also launch his new film at the Fantastic Fest: I Am Here [+see also:
trailer
film profile], with US actress Kim Basinger in the lead as Maria, a successful business executive struggling to fulfil her greatest wish of all: to bring a child into the world. After yet another miscarriage, she is informed that she is too old to have a child; devastated and unable to accept her fate, Maria sets out on a desperate and perilous quest to realise her dream.

With a cast including Peter Stormare, Jordan Prentice and Sebastian Schipper, the English-language thriller-drama, also scripted by Morgenthaler, was produced by Marie Gade Denessen and Julie Lind-Holm for Zentropa Entertainments, with Germany’s Zentropa Berlin, One Two Films and Network Movie. The local premiere has been scheduled for 9 January. 

Danish international sales agency TrustNordisk is handling foreign distribution of both The Absent One and I Am Here, and will also represent a third Nordic movie in Austin: Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland’s Berlinale entry, In Order of Disappearance [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Hans Petter Moland
film profile]. Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård has a carefree life in snow-covered Norway, until his son’s death suddenly lands him in the middle of a drug war between the Norwegian mafia and Serbian criminals. Co-starring Bruno Ganz, Pål Sverre Hagen, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Kristofer Hivju and Jakob Oftebro, the film was produced by Finn Gjerdrum and Stein B Kvae for Paradox.