(Smilla's Sense of Snow)
The Danish author Peter Heg, who rocketed to literary fame - as well as to the top of international bestseller charts - with Frken Smillas fornemmelse for sne (Smilla's Sense of Snow), was an early reviewer of his fellow countryman Bille August's screen interpretation of the 1993 novel.
"It is simply miraculous. In the future, I will find it difficult to distinguish the characters in the film from my own writing," he said of this year's Berlinale opener.
"I was probably the only Dane who hadn't read the book when I was asked to direct it," added August, 48. He was preparing Jerusalem - a SEK45 (US$7) million production of Selma Lagerloef's 1901-1902 classic, now competing fora Swedish Oscar nomination - when German producer Bernd Eichinger signed him for the DKK194 (US$33) million feature. Eichinger and August had previously collaborated on Andernes hus (The House of the Spirits).
"Smilla is an outstanding person. Vulnerable, complex, divided, profound, clear. Having read 30 pages of the novel, I knew I was part of her, and I wanted to have more to do with her.
I realised immediately there was a great film in this unique story. Besides, I am always fascinated by people who are at point zero in their lives, and this is what happens to Smilla, having found dead probably the only person she has ever loved."
Twice winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes (Pelle Erobreren/Pelle The Conqueror 1988, Den goda viljan/The Best Intentions 1992), and once the Foreign Language Oscar (Pelle), August is competing at Berlin for the first time with Smilla, starring Julia Ormond, Gabriel Byrne, Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave. Originally a cinematographer, he had his directorial debut in 1978 (Honningmane/Honey Moon), and an early work, Busters verden (Buster's World, 1984), is screening in the Children's Fest retrospective.
In Smilla, a six-year-old boy plunges to his death from the roof of an apartment block in downtown Copenhagen. Police examine footprints in the snow, concluding it was a tragic accident. But Smilla Jaspersen, a part-native Greenland inuit glaciology scientist who literally reads snow, detects murder, uncovering sinister links between bureaucrats and mining companies, eventually to board an unregistered ship for the Arctic and the final confrontation.
August, who is also attached to O'Keefe - a love story based on the lives of US Big Flower painter Georgia O'Keefe and photographer Alfred Steglich, from a script by Smilla screenwriter Ann Biedermann - will next shoot a new version of Victor Hugo's 1862 classic, Les Miserables, with Liam Neeson in the lead as Jean Valjean, the galley slave. Twelve-week principal photography from a screenplay by Raphael Iglesias will start early March in the Czech Republic for US producer Mandalay Entertainment.
Les Miserables was most recently filmed by French director Claude Lelouch. Jrn Rossing Jensen
Regie (Dir): Bille August Buch
(Scr): Ann Bidermann nach der Vorlage von Peter Heg Darsteller
(Cast): Julia Ormond, Gabriel Byrne, Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave Laenge
(Running time): 121 Minuten
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