Riget (The Kingdom)
When Danish director Lars von Trier was commissionen by pubcaster DR-TV to make a television soap, he considered the project something of a left-handed job, 'but I grew immensely fond of it, and it became quite dear to me,' he added.
Eventually his four-and-a-half-hour series Riget (The Kingdom), screening today/tomorrow in the Panorama, emptied the streets when aired in Denmark, and it has been licensed to 24 territories for theatrical release, besides television deals for, among others, Russia's NTV.
Last year the Venice International Film Festival selected the production for a special screening, and from Venice it has never left the festival circuit. The 35mm blow-up went on to sweep the Danish Oscars ceremony, bagging six out of seven Bodil statuettes.
Set at Copenhagen's Central Hospital known as Riget, and inspired by the classic ghost films of the 1950s, the film explores a spirit of the past, which appears to be Mary, an illegitimate child murdered in 1919 by her father, an infamous doctor at the hospital.
While a patient dabbling in spiritualism seeks to put an end to the 'exterior forces', life goes on as usual at the hospital, where doctors make love on operation tables, transplant and retransplant their favourite livers, and hunt lab rats in the basement.
Credited with such features as The Element of Crime and Europa, both awarded at Cannes, von Trier has been signed by DR-TV to shoot another four episodes of the series, which will go into production after his new feature, Breaking the Waves, has been completed.
Jørn Rossing Jensen
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