Now selected for EFP’s Producer on the Move, Danish producer Daniel Mühlendorph of Hyæne Film has steadily built a reputation for supporting daring, debut voices and balancing artistic ambition with production pragmatism. As Hyæne enters a pivotal year, he shares his outlook on co-productions, talent development, and how producers can lead with intention in a changing market.

Cineuropa: How do you choose the stories you produce? What makes a script or idea stand out to you?
Daniel Mühlendorph: First and foremost, we look at the core of the story: what is its most essential element? Why is it important to be told this story here and now? And why is it important that we’re told it by the person presenting the idea? Regardless of genre, it's crucial that we aim to say something about the world we live in. Whether it’s big or small, there has to be something at stake.

Have you noticed any trends in European cinema that you find particularly exciting or worrying?
There’s a clear sense of hesitancy among various financiers and partners, who are placing greater demands on how we present our projects and the overall package surrounding them. It’s increasingly producers who carry the risk, especially when it comes to talent development, but I’m impressed by the number of strong debut films which are still making it onto major stages around the world every year. I can see a growing trend towards creating high-concept films, where the premise or production constraints themselves offer hope for even bolder and more sharply defined European stories.

How do you balance creative ambition with the practical realities of budgeting, schedules, and marketability?
Most of the first films I produced at Hyæne Film were low-budget films by first-time directors. This means you need to be very precise over the ideas you choose to produce. You have to be able to create a low-budget framework that directors can work within, where the limitations become creative challenges that spark new ideas and solutions. This is something we’ve become particularly good at, and we apply the same mindset to our larger productions. It means we need to look at each project with fresh eyes rather than repeating ourselves or relying on a formula. We have to reinvent it each and every time.

What role does sustainability - both environmental and economic - play in your production strategy?
We’re still a relatively young company and, in the beginning, we had to find our financial footing and decide how we wanted to operate in a world where we also hold ourselves accountable for how we produce films, without leaving a major environmental footprint. From the start, we wanted to build a solid base of people who could grow with the company and ensure we had a team that understood our way of working and could sustain it economically. Early on, we focused on cutting away all the unnecessary aspects of production. In our experience, it’s often easier to make environmentally conscious choices within a low-budget framework, since your options are already limited and every decision in the production process has to be carefully considered - there’s no room for unnecessary luxuries.

Could you tell us a little about your production slate?
Right now, when it comes to our film slate, we’re in an exciting place at Hyæne Film. We’ve worked intensively with many emerging Danish talents, and we’ve managed to produce seven unique debut feature films since our founding. This has led us to a point where we’re shooting Candy King this year, which is the third feature by director and Hyæne Film partner Ulaa Salim, and Brohr, the third feature by the animation collective Gigis. We also have two highly promising projects in development with director Lisa Jespersen: the coming-of-age film Kirsten’s Vengeance, and You Should’ve Been There, based on Thomas Korsgaard’s bestselling trilogy. We’re also developing a larger co-production, Polaris, directed by Christian Andersen —his second film— in collaboration with Grimar Jonsson from Netop Films and Samuel Bruyneel from Lunanime. We’re continuing to focus on developing new talent and we currently have two debut features in development: Medicated by director Las Dyhrcrone and Without You by Nils Holst-Jensen, and we have high hopes for both these talents’ future projects.

How do you go about developing talent, both behind and in front of the cameras, especially when you’re working across borders?
At Hyæne Film, we have two different approaches to selecting talent. Either we choose the director based on their ambitions and vision, not on the story or project specifically but on who they are as a person. We’re interested in their point of view on the world. Alternatively, we choose stories that we, as a company, feel compelled to bring to life, projects which stem from our own creative drive. We want to grow with the current generation, whether with local or international talent. The Hyæne family is a diverse mix of young voices that truly reflects the times we’re living in.

What is it about producing that you think people outside the industry often misunderstand or underestimate?
I think people often view producers as either financiers or purely practical problem-solvers. They don’t realise how much time we invest, from the initial idea through to the film’s release. Our work is incredibly varied and plays a major role in shaping both the creative process and the final outcome of the film.

What do you hope to get out of attending this year's Cannes Film Festival as PotM?
I’m truly grateful to the Danish Film Institute and the European Film Promotion for giving me the opportunity to participate this year. The timing couldn’t be better. This year is a transitional one for our company, with the majority of our works consisting of co-productions that require cross-European collaboration to take shape. I’ve chosen to bring a slate of three projects to Producers on the Move, and I can already see how much they’ll benefit from it, while my own network continues to grow stronger.