Charlotte Sachs Bostrup to finish Swinger, written and started by Mikkel Munch-Fals
- The Danish Film Institute has supported the film consultant’s romantic comedy after a complicated legal case
When Danish writer-director Mikkel Munch-Fals was appointed film consultant at the Danish Film Institute (DFI) in May 2015, he had just started shooting his second feature, Swinger, which was a problem: according to film legislation, a consultant must not be employed by or financially involved in a production.
Munch-Fals left the project in August, and when Meta Film – the production company – later applied for institute funding to finish off the romantic comedy, DFI managing director Henrik Bo Nielsen thought the institute staff working with support – now Munch-Fals’ colleagues – were disqualified from handling the case.
Instead, Lena Hansson-Varhegyi, a former film consultant at the Swedish Film Institute, was asked to review the project, and the institute has now chipped in €255,000 for the production, which will be finished by Danish director Charlotte Sachs Bostrup (whose most recent feature was 2014’s The Cartel).
Munch-Fals’ script follows Adam, who has so far been spoiled by life – a good job, a lovely wife, an expensive villa, an independent son – but still it isn’t good enough. Even the swinger weekend trips he has been taking with his wife have become a joyless routine, and his youthful optimism and appetite for life are distant memories. Then, one day, at another swingers’ club, he does what swingers don’t do – he falls in love.
Filmed on the island of Ærø, Swinger has a Danish ensemble cast comprising Martin Buch, Mille Dinesen, Birthe Neumann, Lisbeth Wulff, Natalie Madueño and Therese Damsgaard. The Meta Film producers are Meta Louise Foldager, Emilie Lebech Kaae and Stine Meldgaard, and the movie is being co-financed by TV2 Danmark, Danish regional film centre FilmFyn and Creative Europe. Denmark’s SF Film – a subsidiary of Swedish major Svensk – expects to release the film in Denmark later this year, with Svensk handling the other Nordic countries.
Munch-Fals’ feature debut was the award-winning Nothing’s All Bad [+see also:
trailer
film profile] in 2010; besides directing a couple of shorts and a TV pilot, in 2008 he was a host on Premiere, Danish pubcaster DR TV’s film programme on DR2.
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