Since the inaugural award in 1956 Denmark has submitted fifty-six films for consideration for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, eleven of which succeeded in getting nominated for the Academy Award: Qivitoq (1958), Paw (1959), Harry and the Butler (1960), Babette's Feast (1987), Pelle the Conqueror (1988), Memories of a Marriage (1989), After the Wedding (2006), In a Better World (2010), A Royal Affair (2012), The Hunt (2013) and A War (2015). Three Danish movies have won the Oscar: Babette's Feast (1987), Pelle the Conqueror (1988) and In a Better World (2010).
Denmark, officially the Kingdom of Denmark, is a sovereign state in Northern Europe. Denmark proper consists of a peninsula, Jutland, and an archipelago of 443 named islands, with the largest being Zealand, Funen and the North Jutlandic Island. The islands are characterised by flat, arable land and sandy coasts, low elevation and a temperate climate. The southernmost of the Scandinavian nations, Denmark lies southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and is bordered to the south by Germany. The Kingdom of Denmark also comprises two autonomous constituent countries in the North Atlantic Ocean: the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Denmark has a total area of 42,924 km2 (16,573 sq mi), land area of 42,394 km2 (16,368 sq mi), and the total area including Greenland and the Faroe Islands is 2,210,579 km2 (853,509 sq mi), and a population of 5.8 million.
Qivitoq is a 1956 Danish film directed by Erik Balling and starring Poul Reichhardt and Astrid Villaume. An intense romantic drama, the movie was filmed entirely on location in Greenland. It was nominated both for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and for the Palme D'Or at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.
Paw is a 1959 Danish film directed by Astrid Henning-Jensen.
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The official Danish submission is selected annually in late summer by the Danish Film Institute [1]
The Danish Film Institute is the national Danish agency responsible for supporting and encouraging film and cinema culture, and for conserving these in the national interest.
In 1957, Denmark became the first country to send a film with a female director to the Foreign Oscar competition (Annelise Hovmand's Be Dear to Me ). Two years later, Astrid Henning-Jensen's Paw became to the first film directed by a woman to receive a nomination in the category.
Annelise Hovmand was a Danish film director, screenwriter and film producer. She directed 12 films between 1955 and 1991. Her 1957 film Ingen tid til kærtegn won the Bodil Award for Best Danish Film and was entered into the 7th Berlin International Film Festival.
Be Dear to Me is a 1957 Danish film directed by Annelise Hovmand.
Astrid Henning-Jensen was a Danish film director, actress, editor and screenwriter.
Between 1998 and 2002, four out of five Danish submissions were made according to the austere Dogme 95 principles. None were nominated and none have been submitted since.
Dogme 95 was a filmmaking movement started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vows of Chastity". These were rules to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and excluding the use of elaborate special effects or technology. It was an attempt to take back power for the director as artist, as opposed to the studio. They were later joined by fellow Danish directors Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, forming the Dogme 95 Collective or the Dogme Brethren. Dogme is the Danish word for dogma.
