29/05/2019 - The director’s new project revolves around the bombing of the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen during Operation Carthage

After the success of last year’s box-office hit The Way to Mandalay [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Ole Bornedal is ready to get to work on his new project, a high-budget historical drama set during the final stages of World War II. Born in Nørresundby in 1959, the Danish filmmaker started his career in the early 1990s and has rapidly risen to prominence in the national film scene since then.

His new feature, entitled The Shadow in My Eye and penned in its entirety by the director himself, centres on the bombing of the Shellhus, a facility used as the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen during the war. On 21 March 1945, the British Royal Air Force was tasked with bombing the Shellhus; however, the raid had unexpected deadly consequences, as some of the bombers accidentally targeted the local French school and more than 120 innocent civilians were killed, 86 of whom were children. As a result of the British victory, the Shellhus was entirely destroyed, 18 prisoners were freed and Nazi anti-resistance activities were disrupted.

The project, produced by duo Jonas Allen and Peter Bose for Copenhagen-based firm Miso Film, received a production grant of 16 million Danish crowns (circa €2.14 million) from the Danish Film Institute as well as additional backing from national public broadcaster TV2 and Sweden’s SF Studios. Allen and Bose are producing a Bornedal work for the fourth time, following the historical TV series 1864 (2014) and two of the director’s most recent features – namely, Small Town Killers [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2017) and The Way to Mandalay (2018).

The Shadow in My Eye has received the biggest ever production grant from the Danish Film Institute. Bornedal’s film is one of the few high-budget features to receive funding as a result of the new film agreement approved by the parliament last year. Overall, the new agreement allows for greater flexibility and enables the film body to invest in two or three high-end features per year.

In a press release published recently by Miso Film, the director explained: “The Shadow in My Eye is about children. It’s seen through the eyes of children, from that perspective, and with the sense of wonder with which children must observe a grotesque world around them. It’s the story of innocence versus machines, of the child who falls victim to the horrors of coincidence.”

Principal photography is scheduled to start in late autumn 2019. SF Studios will handle the Nordic distribution, but an official release date is yet to be disclosed.