Danish cinema, 1996–2026: 30 years of discovery
Danish cinema boasts a number of great pioneers, starting with Carl Theodor Dreyer and Henning Carlsen. Then came Lars von Trier, to whom Premiers Plans already dedicated a major retrospective in 2014. in the mid-1990s it was he, alongside Thomas Vinterberg, who launched Dogme 95.
A reaction to Anglo-Saxon blockbusters and their excessive use of artifice and special effects, Dogme 95 sought to restore a formal simplicity able to address the challenges of the contemporary world. The manifesto imposed strict rules: shooting with a handheld camera, natural light, no added music, no special effects. The films that emerged, starting with Vinterberg’s Festen (1998), crystallised a lively, edgy style, directly in touch with reality, in which improvisation played a major role. Even though its proponents never fully adhered to their own commandments. That same year, a young, anti-establishment director set out to shoot Pusher, a rebellious and aggressive genre film, out on the streets without authorisation. This film gave rise to a violent, urban trilogy. His name: Nicolas Winding Refn; his actor: a certain Mads Mikkelsen…
This impetus led to the emergence of a generation of films, filmmakers and actors who have graced our screens, both big and small, ever since. Susanne Bier (Brothers, 2004), Anders Thomas Jensen (The Last Viking, 2025), Tobias Lindholm (A Hijacking, 2012), Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair, 2012) and May el-Toukhy, who has just won the Golden Lion at Venice for Woman Unknown (2026), which we will be screening as a première: all of them are part of this group of filmmakers, who often write screenplays for one another, working in both Danish cinema and television, notably the acclaimed series Borgen (2010–2022). Mads Mikkelsen and his brother Lars, Trine Dyrholm, Kim Bodnia, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Sidse Babett Knudsen and Ulrich Thomsen are among the actors and actresses who have become familiar faces both in Denmark and abroad.
It is worth noting that Denmark is a small country with a population of around 5 million, and that the wealth of films and filmmakers to have emerged from it over the past thirty years is impressive. These range from conceptual films (such as The Guilty, 2018, which follows a man exclusively whilst he is on the phone) to those aimed at an international audience, tackling subjects such as modern-day piracy (A Hijacking, 2012) or alcoholism (Drunk, 2020), not to mention crime thrillers. Denmark has also proved to be fertile ground for genre cinema, spearheaded by Nicolas Winding Refn but followed by many others...
Premiers Plans is presenting a retrospective inviting you to discover 30 years of Danish cinema and to build bridges between different artists of the same generation.
