Thomas Vinterberg (Danish: [ˈtsʰʌmæs ˈve̝nˀtɐˌpɛɐ̯ˀ] ; born 19 May 1969) is a Danish film director who, along with Lars von Trier, co-founded the Dogme 95 movement in filmmaking, which established rules for simplifying movie production. He is best known for the films The Celebration (1998), Submarino (2010), The Hunt (2012), Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), and Another Round (2020). For Another Round, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, [1] the former became the first Danish filmmaker nominated for Best Director. [2]
Vinterberg was born in Frederiksberg, Denmark. In 1993, he graduated from the National Film School of Denmark with Last Round (Sidste omgang), [3] which won the jury and producers' awards at the Internationales Festival der Filmhochschulen München, and First Prize at Tel Aviv. [4]
The same year, Vinterberg made his first TV drama for DR TV and his short fiction film The Boy Who Walked Backwards , [5] produced by Birgitte Hald at Nimbus Film. [6] The film won awards at the 1994 Nordisk Panorama Film Festival, the International Short Film Festival in Clermont-Ferrand, and the Toronto International Film Festival. [6]
His first feature film was The Biggest Heroes (De Største Helte), a road movie that received acclaim in his native Denmark.
In 1995, Vinterberg formed the Dogme 95 movement with Lars von Trier, Kristian Levring, and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen.
Following that dogma in 1998, he conceived, wrote and directed (and also had a small acting role in) the first of the Dogme movies, The Celebration (Festen). As per the rules of the Dogme manifesto, he did not take a directorial credit. However, he and the film won numerous nominations and awards, including the Jury Prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. [7]
At the turn of the century, Vinterberg participated in the experimental broadcast D-dag, where he and three other filmmakers directed broadcasts on four different channels, with the viewer able to switch between them and create their own viewing experience. A final edit was released in 2001. [8]
In 2003, he directed the apocalyptic science fiction romance-drama It's All About Love , a film he wrote, directed and produced himself over a period of five years. The film was entirely in English and featured, among others, Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes, and Sean Penn. The movie did not do well, as critics and audiences found it idiosyncratic and somewhat incomprehensible.
His next film, the English-language Dear Wendy (2005), scripted by Lars von Trier, also flopped, even in his native Denmark where it sold only 14,521 tickets. [9] However he won the Silver George for Best Director at the 27th Moscow International Film Festival. [10] Vinterberg then tried to retrace his roots with a smaller Danish-language production, En mand kommer hjem (2007), which also flopped, selling only 31,232 tickets. [11]
On 1 August 2008, he directed the music video for "The Day That Never Comes", the first single off Metallica's album Death Magnetic .
His 2010 film Submarino was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival. [12]
In 2012, his film The Hunt competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival [13] [14] and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards.
In 2015, he directed Far from the Madding Crowd , an adaptation of the acclaimed Thomas Hardy novel, starring Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen and Tom Sturridge.
Vinterberg reunited with Matthias Schoenaerts [15] [16] in Kursk , [17] a film about the Kursk submarine disaster that happened in 2000.
In 2019, Vinterberg lost his daughter Ida in a car accident while she was traveling home from Belgium with her mother. As such, he dedicated Another Round (Druk) to her, while filming much of the film in her school with her classmates. [18] Vinterberg was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for the film, which also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language. He also won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film; he dedicated the award to Ida. [19]
He is currently developing his first foray into directing for TV with an original six-episode series called Families Like Ours which explores a near-future Denmark when the country is gradually evacuated due to rising sea levels. [20]
In April 2016, the French government appointed Vinterberg a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. [21]
Short film
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer |
---|---|---|---|---|
1990 | Sneblind | Yes | No | Executive |
1991 | Brudevalsen | Yes | Yes | No |
1993 | Sidste omgang | Yes | Yes | No |
Slaget på tasken | Yes | Yes | No | |
1994 | Drengen der gik baglæns | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Feature film
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
1996 | The Biggest Heroes | Yes | Yes | written with Bo Hr. Hansen |
1998 | The Celebration | Yes | Yes | uncredited as director, written with Mogens Rukov |
2003 | It's All About Love | Yes | Yes | written with Mogens Rukov |
2005 | Dear Wendy | Yes | No | |
2007 | A Man Comes Home | Yes | Yes | written with Mogens Rukov |
2010 | Submarino | Yes | Yes | written with Tobias Lindholm |
2012 | The Hunt | Yes | Yes | also producer, written with Tobias Lindholm |
2015 | Far from the Madding Crowd | Yes | No | based on the book of the same name |
2016 | The Commune | Yes | Yes | written with Tobias Lindholm |
2018 | Kursk | Yes | No | based on the book A Time to Die |
2020 | Another Round | Yes | Yes | written with Tobias Lindholm |
Television
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
2001 | D-Day | Yes | No | Experimental film, in collaboration with Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, Kristian Levring, and Lars von Trier |
2023 | Families Like Ours | Yes | Yes | Miniseries |
Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter, initially an actor and lyricist, with a controversial career spanning more than four decades. His work is known for his trilogies as well as its genre and technical innovation, confrontational examination of existential, social, and political issues, and his treatment of subjects such as mercy, sacrifice, and mental health.
Breaking the Waves is a 1996 psychological drama film directed and co-written by Lars von Trier and starring Emily Watson. Set in the Scottish Highlands in the early 1970s, it is about an unusual young woman and of the love she has for her husband, who asks her to have sex with other men when he becomes immobilised from a work accident. The film is an international co-production between United Kingdom and Denmark, the latter's involvement led by von Trier under his Danish company Zentropa. It is the first film in Trier's Golden Heart Trilogy, which also includes The Idiots (1998) and Dancer in the Dark (2000).
The Idiots is a 1998 Danish dark comedy-drama film written and directed by Lars von Trier. It is his first film made in compliance with the Dogme 95 Manifesto, and is also known as Dogme #2. It is the second film in von Trier's Golden Heart Trilogy, preceded by Breaking the Waves (1996) and succeeded by Dancer in the Dark (2000). It is among the first films to be shot entirely with digital cameras.
Mifune is a 1999 romantic comedy film, it is the third film to be made according to the Dogme 95 group rules. It was directed by Søren Kragh-Jacobsen. The film was a great success in Denmark and an international blockbuster, ranked among the ten best-selling Danish films worldwide. It was produced by Nimbus Film.
Kristian Levring is a Danish film director. He was the fourth signatory of the Dogme95 movement. His feature films as director include Et skud fra hjertet, The King is Alive, The Intended, Fear Me Not, and The Salvation.
Festen is a 1998 Danish dark comedy-drama film directed by Thomas Vinterberg and produced by Nimbus Film.
Denmark has been producing films since 1897 and since the 1980s has maintained a steady stream of product due largely to funding by the state-supported Danish Film Institute. Historically, Danish films have been noted for their realism, religious and moral themes, sexual frankness and technical innovation.
Kirstine "Paprika" Steen is a Danish actress and director best known for her performances in Dogme 95 films Festen, The Idiots, Mifune, and Open Hearts. Steen was the first Danish actress since Karin Nellemose in 1994 to win both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in the same year at the Robert Festival, the Danish equivalent of the Oscars.
Nimbus Film is Denmark's third largest film production company.
Matthias Schoenaerts is a Belgian actor. He made his film debut at the age of 13 in Daens (1992), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He is best known for his roles as Filip in Loft (2008), Jacky Vanmarsenille in the Oscar-nominated Bullhead (2011), Ali in the BAFTA and Golden Globe-nominee Rust and Bone (2012), for which he won the César Award for Most Promising Actor, Eric Deeds in The Drop (2014), Bruno von Falk in Suite Française (2015), Gabriel Oak in Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), Hans Axgil in The Danish Girl (2015) and Uncle Vanya in Red Sparrow (2018). Schoenaerts also received critical acclaim for his portrayal of an ex-soldier suffering from PTSD in Disorder (2015), and for his performance as an inmate training a wild horse in The Mustang (2019).
Anthony Dod Mantle, DFF, BSC, ASC is a British cinematographer and still photographer. He won the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography for Slumdog Millionaire (2008). Other accolades include two Bodil Awards, two European Film Awards, and four Robert Awards.
Zentropa, or Zentropa Entertainments, is a Danish film company started in 1992 by director Lars von Trier and producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen. Zentropa is named after the train company Zentropa in the film Europa (1991), which started the collaboration between von Trier and Jensen.
Lone Scherfig is a Danish film director and screenwriter who has been involved with the Dogme 95 film movement and who has been widely critically acclaimed for several of her movies, including the Oscar-nominated film An Education (2009). Scherfig's movies are generally romantic comedies, including her film One Day (2011), based on the David Nicholls's novel of the same name.
Dogme 95 is a controversial avant-garde 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 films based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and excluding the use of elaborate special effects or technology. It was supposedly created as an attempt to "take back power for the directors as artists", 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.
Events from the year 1998 in Denmark.
Submarino is a 2010 Danish drama film directed by Thomas Vinterberg, starring Jakob Cedergren and Peter Plaugborg. It is based on the 2007 novel Submarino by Jonas T. Bengtsson, and focuses on two brothers on the bottom of Danish society, with lives marked by violence and drug addiction. The film was produced by Nimbus Film. As a condition from the financier TV 2, half of the cast and crew were novices, which the director enjoyed as it gave an experience similar to his earliest films.
The Robert Award for Best Danish Film is presented at an annual Robert Award ceremony by the Danish Film Academy
Kursk is a 2018 disaster drama-thriller film directed by Thomas Vinterberg, based on Robert Moore's book A Time to Die, about the true story of the 2000 Kursk submarine disaster. It stars Matthias Schoenaerts, Léa Seydoux, Peter Simonischek, August Diehl, Max von Sydow, and Colin Firth. It was the last film featuring von Sydow to be released before his death in March 2020.
Another Round is a 2020 black comedy-drama film directed by Thomas Vinterberg, from a screenplay by Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm. An international co-production between Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden, the film stars Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang, and Lars Ranthe.
Interview is a 2000 South Korean experimental romantic drama film directed and co-written by La Femis-graduate and academic Daniel H. Byun. Production began in September 1999, the film was hailed as the first Asian as well as the first South Korean feature-length film ever produced to follow the guidelines of Danish's avant-garde movement Dogme 95, and the seventh film officially certified as a Dogme. As a part of the Dogme films and with a budgeted at $2 million, the story is about Eun-seok, who is pretending to make a documentary about love after involves a young woman Young-hee, who works as a beauty assistant, found in a tape filmed by Seok's assistant director Min-su.
Thomas Vinterberg fandt på Filmskolen sammen med manuskriptforfatteren Bo Hr. Hansen (manus årgang 1991). De skrev sammen hans afgangsfilm Sidste omgang (1993) og siden kortfilmen Drengen der gik baglæns (1994) og ...
Sein Abschlußfilm "SIDSTE OMGANG" (1993) wurde sowohl auf dem Internationalen Studentenfestival in München als auch auf dem Festival in Tel Aviv prämiert und 1994 als bester Studentenfilm für ...