22/03/2013 - Ole Bornedal’s historical drama, 1864 – largest film project ever realised in Denmark, on a €23.9 million budget – starts principal photography in and outside Prague

Denmark’s so-far largest film project, Danish director Ole Bornedal’s 1864, will shoot from April 8 in the Czech Republic on a €23.9 million budget, with a cast of 130 actors and 6,000 extras, for a two-hour feature and 8x60mins television series, which will air in early 2014 – 150 years after Denmark’s defeat at Dybbøl on April 18, 1864, where it lost more than 40% of the country and 20% of its population.

At a press conference in Copenhagen yesterday, Bornedal (photo) introduced his cast for the historical (and historically expensive) drama with Frederik Sætter-Lassen and Jakob Oftebro as the two peasant brothers Peter and Laust, who get involved in the Danish-German war, and Sarah Sofie Boussnina as the girl Claudia, they both are in love with.

Adding to the young ménage-à-trois are Danish top actors Søren Malling, Pilou Asbæk, Lars Mikkelsen, Nicolas Bro, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Waage Sandø, Jens Jørn Spotttag, Sofie Gråbøl, Sidse Babett Knudsen and Helle Fagralid in the film, which is scripted by Bornedal and based on Danish historian Tom Buk-Swienty’s best-selling books about the war, Slaughter Bench Dybbøl and Doomsday Als – “but still as historical a drama, not a documentary.”

Still when writing the script he would send draughts to Buk-Swienty to check for historical correctness - “and such films don’t come cheap. When I scribble 'Copenhagen cobblestones, horse carriages run down the street’ - there goes €40,000. ‘Dybbøl Mill in flames’ is another €150,000. And just image how much ‘24,000 German soldiers storming Dybbøl’ would cost,” he has previously explained.

The project was instigated in 2011 when Danish public broadcaster DR-TV received a special state budget of €13.4 million earmarked for a “historical drama”. Danish producers Peter Bose and Jonas Allen, of Danish production outfit Miso Film, packaged the production with local distributor SF Film, and broadcasters TV2 Norway, TV4 Sweden, Germany’s ZDF-Arte.

First 69 days of the 1864 shoot will take place in the Czech Republic, which most recently doubled for Denmark in Danish director Nikolaj Arcel’s Oscar-nominated A Royal Affair [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mikkel Boe Følsgaard
interview: Nikolaj Arcel
film profile], also co-produced by Prague-based Sirena Film, which has provided the €8.6 million Czech public and private contribution to the budget. Filming will continue on the Danish island of Funen and wrap in October.