In 2020, Magnus von Horn was excited to search out that his movie Sweat had been accepted into the Official Choice at Cannes, an enormous step up from his debut, The Right here After, which made Administrators’ Fortnight in 2015. The pandemic put an finish to that, however his disappointment was short-lived; this 12 months, his darkish atmospheric follow-up, The Woman With the Needle, sees him becoming a member of the massive league. “That is big to me,” he beams. “The primary competitors!”
Magnus von Horn
Juan Naharro/Getty Photos
Set in Denmark throughout World Conflict I, the movie stars Vic Carmen Sonne as Karoline, a younger seamstress whose soldier husband is lacking in motion. By a collection of mishaps, Karolin falls pregnant, loses her job, and meets a mysterious lady named Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm) who runs each a sweet retailer and an adoption company.
Now based mostly in Poland, the place he graduated from Łódź Movie Faculty in 2013, Von Horn has at all times pursued a profession in movie. “I’ve made movies since so long as I can bear in mind. I attempted many alternative issues in artwork — portray, poetry, and pictures — however filmmaking someway clicked with me. I don’t know precisely why, however I do know that after I look again on the movies I did as an adolescent, they’re kind of precisely the identical because the movies I’m making now, thematically. There are specific sorts of tales that appeal to me, usually with a darkness that I feel I can specific in filmmaking.”
Right here he discusses The Woman With the Needle…
DEADLINE: How did this movie come about?
MAGNUS VON HORN: I’m Swedish, and now I’m Polish as effectively, since I simply received a citizenship there. I moved to Poland for movie faculty, and I stayed. I’ve a spouse and household there. I used to be approached by producer Malene Blenkov with this undertaking, which got here from an concept by the co-writer, Line Langebek Knudsen. It was simply an concept firstly, and I used to be requested to leap on board, and we ended up growing it for a really very long time. That’s the way it started and that’s how Denmark got here into the image. Which I appreciated. It’s good to direct in languages that aren’t my very own. It creates a sure distance, possibly even a type of ignorance, that provides you a freedom you don’t have should you’re working in your native language.
DEADLINE: What was the inspiration?
VON HORN: The place to begin was a real story, of one of the horrendous and controversial crimes in Danish historical past. I don’t wish to spoil issues by explaining precisely what that was, nevertheless it was a narrative that provoked me very deeply. At first, I couldn’t see a solution to inform that story, in a manner that wasn’t simply exploiting the matter, or in a manner that will be significant. That’s very a lot when the thought of the primary character got here in, and her journey by poverty, on the lookout for a greater life in post-World Conflict I Copenhagen. I started to suppose, How a lot do we would like a greater life? And what worth are we ready to pay for that?” Loads of these themes got here up that me. However in the course of the improvement of the movie, because it took such a very long time, I additionally had additionally private expertise of my very own that I discovered had been mirrored on this story, which grew to become lots about what we do with undesirable [children], in a manner. It’s very private to me, however I’m completely happy to discuss it.
DEADLINE: What occurred?
VON HORN: My spouse was pregnant with a terminally unwell foetus and we went by an abortion. This was one thing that deeply affected me and in addition this undertaking.
DEADLINE: Why?
VON HORN: What we went by despatched us on a an emotional journey past politics. I felt remorse and doubt even when I knew we had completed the fitting factor. I discover this battle mirrored within the story of Karoline, who provides away a baby she doesn’t need — and but there’s additionally one thing in her that regrets that call. I’ve at all times been pro-choice, I assist abortion. However we reside in Poland, and in 2020 the right-wing authorities launched a number of the strictest abortion legal guidelines on the planet and particularly in Europe. The abortion we had would have been inconceivable as we speak and my spouse would have been pressured to hold a baby that will haven’t any likelihood of surviving. That’s torture. If there isn’t any authorized assist for girls in such troublesome conditions, alternate options are created within the shadows of society. This is among the primary matters of the movie.
Trine Dyrholm in The Woman With The Needle.
DEADLINE: What was behind the choice to shoot in black and white?
VON HORN: I at all times discover it troublesome to consider in interval movies, once we’re purported to be watching a narrative that occurred 100 years in the past. So, it was a solution to recreate this world, a solution to really feel like we’re doing somewhat little bit of time journey. That was an enormous problem. We had been impressed by pictures from that point, and in addition somewhat later, which is at all times black and white and has develop into caught in our heads. It will totally different, I feel, if this was a movie a couple of Renaissance painter or one thing like that. That world I see in coloration, as a result of it involves us by work, however this world I see in black and white as a result of it’s at all times been offered to us that manner, and I’ve at all times seen it that manner.
And I additionally suppose it’s fully a manner for us to push the fairy story facet of the movie. It’s not a world that’s completely based mostly on details. It’s not precisely what Copenhagen in that point seemed like. We shot the entire movie in Poland, in areas that we felt had been visually fascinating, that represented a mode and a glance that we needed the movie to have.
DEADLINE: How did you discover Vic Carmen Sonne, who performs Karoline?
VON HORN: I met Karoline possibly two years earlier than we began manufacturing. I’ve a worry of by no means discovering my primary actress, and I discovered her in a short time. She felt she was proper for this half and, after the casting course of was over, I felt fully the identical. She has a visible impact on me that simply makes me consider she comes from that point. I can put her in entrance of the digicam, in these settings, and he or she works completely. She was additionally very useful later. As a result of Vic was on the undertaking very early, Vic launched me to different Danish actors and actresses — who’re within the movie — and different artistic individuals, too. It was my first time making a movie in Denmark, and I’d by no means labored in that society of filmmakers earlier than.
Learn the digital version of Deadline’s Disruptors/Cannes journal right here.
DEADLINE: It’s a really totally different function for Trine Dyrholm. How did you get her concerned?
VON HORN: Nicely, I’d at all times needed to work together with her, and I used to be simply so completely happy the second she mentioned sure. I’d approached when the script wasn’t actually prepared, and he or she mentioned, “No, it’s too early.” So, I stored growing it, and I returned to her [with a new draft] and requested her once more. This time, she agreed. The primary time we met, we had been having lunch, and we had been speaking concerning the script. I may see that she that she was curious concerning the character. She took up a toothpick and began frantically taking part in with a tooth. It was like she was giving me somewhat style of what she may do with this character. She didn’t say as a lot, however I may really feel it. I may really feel she was giving me one thing, somewhat present, and after that I may by no means think about anybody else. She’s kind of fearless, in a manner that’s essential. To enter darkness or be unsympathetic, she’s not frightened of that.
DEADLINE: It’s fascinating that we don’t actually discover out what her character’s motivations are…
VON HORN: We had a number of variations [of the script] that went extra into, let’s say, the social elements of the entire thing. They’re nonetheless there, in a manner. However what this character does just isn’t one thing I wish to defend, on a sure stage. I’m additionally not going to faux, or attempt, to search out the explanations for her conduct. For me, it was vital that she’s a type of a satan. And the satan has her causes…
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