15/03/2016 - After Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl, the fund has got behind Per Fly’s Backstabbing for Beginners, among other titles

Tarik Saleh, the director of The Nile Hilton Incident (© Martin Holmström)

The Copenhagen Film Fund, which has collected €3.1 million for its 2016 investment pool, will provide €0.4 million for Danish director Per Fly’s thriller Backstabbing for Beginners, starring British actors Theo James and Ben Kingsley, which will be partly filmed in Copenhagen. 

Based on My Crash Course in International Diplomacy, written by Danish former UN employee and whistle-blower Michael Soussan, the €8 million production by Denmark’s Creative Alliance and Parts & Labor, with Canada’s Scythia Films and Sweden’s Eyeworks, follows the then programme coordinator for the UN’s Oil-for-Food Programme, who discovers corruption in the innermost circles of the UN and realises that the only way to stop it is by disclosing everything.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Meanwhile, German directors Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein’sextra-terrestrial 3D animated film Luis and His Friends from Outer Space, which is expected to spend almost €1 million on production in Copenhagen, received €0.2 million in backing from the fund. Staged by Germany’s Ulysses, Luxembourg’s Fabrique d’Images and A-Film, the movie begins when three aliens land in 12-year-old Luis’ backyard.

Currently shooting in Cairo, Swedish director Tarik Saleh’s The Nile Hilton Incident [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tarik Saleh
film profile] received €0.1 million; produced by Sweden’s Atmo Rights, with Denmark’s Final Cut for Real, the noir thriller starring Fares Fares has placed its production design and post-production (VFX and editing) in Copenhagen. In the film, the murder of a famous singer culminates in the Arab Spring of 2010 and the collapse of the Egyptian state.

The fund most recently chipped in €0.8 million for the Copenhagen shoot of British director Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paco Delgado
film profile] – its so-far largest international production – which was nominated for five Oscars and won one, for Alicia Vikander, as Best Supporting Actress. Vikander played the wife of Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe, who became the world’s first transgender woman. Upon its release in Denmark last month (February), the film sold 60,000 tickets within the first week.

A new assignment for the fund will be to administer Film Greater Copenhagen, the new regional film commission that was previously part of the Oresund Film Commission. After 13 years, this administration will be replaced by two – the other being the Southern Sweden Film Commission – which will assist productions on the island of Zealand and in Southern Sweden. Film Greater Copenhagen will appoint a manager in April.