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Film tip - Christoffer Boe's 'fresh' film & interview with the director

Let us invite you for tonight's screening of a new film directed by Christoffer Boe, 'Everything Will Be Fine', to Cinema Aero, 10 pm. View a trailer and read an interview with the filmmaker published in FRESH NEWS that are available at the stands at all festival venues.

Everything Will Be Fine

The film will be presented by the director himself and screened for the first time since this year's Cannes festival.

This film is marketed as a political thriller, but the puzzle is far more complex than that. Boe follows and skillfully blends two parallel story lines, in which director Jacob accidentally discovers secret documents about the involvement of Danish soldiers in the torture of Iraqi prisoners. “My intention was always to get a thriller going, which creates certain expectations that are then continually deconstructed. We do that by allowing the film to stop and say, ‘This thriller is only interesting in light of the melodramatic tale of two people failing at love’,” says the director.

 

Christoffer Boe (1974, Denmark)

Christoffer Boe, writer and director, graduated from The National Film School of Denmark in 2001, where he directed the short films “Obsession” (1999), Virginity (2000) and Anxiety (2001). His first feature film Reconstruction (2003) won the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival that same year. Christoffer Boe’s second feature Allegro (2005) starring Helena Christensen and Ulrich Thomsen was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. At the Venice Film Festival in 2006, Christoffer Boe was presented with the Young Cinema Award for the experimental film Offscreen (2006). He is a co-owner of Alphaville Pictures Copenhagen ApS. Everything Will Be Fine (2010) is Boe’s fourth feature film, and his forthcoming feature project Beast is in post-production.

You have the chance to meet Boe, juror of 7FFF Main Competion, at his Masterclass which will take place in the premises of FAMU, August 29. As you might already know, we are presenting a retrospective of Boe's films.

FRESH NEWS Interview

You were accepted to the national Film School of Denmark in 1997, at the age of 23, and after several years of studying film history. Why did you decide to do the director’s course? It does not look like you “always wanted to be a film director”...

Well, I didn’t always want to be a film director – I wanted to be a lawyer! But in the end I had too many issues with the government for that to ever really work out. So from the moment I dropped that idea – I was 18 – I knew I wanted to become a director. To me, the most natural, interesting and fun way to do that was by watching movies – so I did that for a couple of years before I entered film school.

As a member of the jury, you will have to decide which film is the best. What will your criteria be? What is most important for you as a spectator, if you have to decide which film is good and which one even better?

All movies are judged by the same standard: technical capabilities (which is not to say that more money or more equipment is better. Gummo is a much more technically interesting movie than Spiderman), personal vision and the use of the story. In other words, I like a movie to be personal with an artistic vision and to make use of the technical aspects of moviemaking in order to tell a story that seems important for the filmmaker. The last thing is vital. How many movies are made that really interest the people who make them?

You always sign your films as “Hr. Boe & Co.”. Can you please explain the meaning of this to the Czech audience? Who is your company?

My company is just me & my friends. We started making movies almost 10 years ago – and we’re still at it. Having fun – and trying to make movies - that looks and feels a little different.

At Fresh Film Fest 2010 we are also going to see your new film Alting Bliver Godt Igen (Everything Will Be Fine), why have you decided to make a political thriller? Are you interested in the genre, politically active or did you simply want to tell this story?

All of the above! I love thrillers – and their pursuit of a man’s paranoia, but I also wanted to deal with something from the real world which also was a great story. Hopefully it’s all there in the movie. Something real, something fiction, something paranoia and a lot about life!