Film Archive

Terribly Happy

Official Selection - Competition 2008 / Frygtelig Lykkelig / Denmark 2008

After a case of professional misconduct, a young policeman from Copenhagen is reassigned to a small provincial town on the Jutland peninsula. He soon comes into conflict with the strange local inhabitants, whose world ends at the bottomless peat bogs located nearby. This grotesque, sombre drama with elements taken from the western and horror genres, is striking for its original stylisation and superb performances.

Synopsis

A Copenhagen policeman called Robert (the superb Jakob Cedergren, familiar from Dagur Karí’s film Dark Horse) moves to a provincial town, where he has been temporarily reassigned after a recent case of professional misconduct. Another lingering cloudy day comes to an end in South Jutland and the arrival of the young man from the big city is met by a look of curious satisfaction on the rigid faces of the local inhabitants. The constable, who does everything “by the book”, is soon confronted with the local customs and begins to sense that troubling secrets lurk behind the façade of what appears to be quite ordinary small-town life. Inspired by the novel by Erling Jepsen (who wrote the novel on which the successful film The Art of Crying is based), Genz’s grotesque drama, with its deviations into the crime, western and horror genres, is striking for its original stylisation and spellbinding evocation of the atmosphere pervading this disturbed community. “I wanted the film to be experienced as a nightmare in a surreal, parallel world, where things are fairly realistic, but everything is always shifting ever so slightly”, says the director of his film.

About the film

105 min / Color, 35 mm
World premiere
Director Henrik Ruben Genz / Screenplay Henrik Ruben Genz, Dunja Gry Jensen podle románu Erlinga Jepsena / based on the novel by Erling Jepsen / Dir. of Photography Jørgen Johansson / Music Kåre Bjerkø / Editor Kasper Leick / Producer Thomas Gammeltoft / Production Fine & Mellow / Cast Jakob Cedergren, Kim Bodnia, Lene Maria Christensen, Lars Brygmann / Contact Fine & Mellow A/S, TrustNordisk, Danish Film Institute / Distributor CinemArt, a.s.

About the director

Henrik Ruben Genz (b. 1959, Gram, Denmark) graduated in 1995 from the National Film School of Denmark. That same year, Cross Roads (Omveje) won Best Film and Best Screenplay at the Munich International Film School Festival. Of his documentaries and short feature films, the most successful has been Theis & Nico (Bror, min bror, 1998), which brought him an Oscar nomination and a Glass Bear at the Berlinale. Genz’s first feature, Someone Like Hodder (En som Hodder, 2003), was honoured by the juries of several festivals, including Chicago, London and Buenos Aires. Genz had a film in competition at the KVIFF back in 2005, Chinaman (Kinamand), which won the Ecumenical Jury and FIPRESCI prizes.