Movies and shakers
Omar Shargawi has also detected a new sense of purpose among up-and-coming filmmakers in Denmark since the release of Go With Peace Jamil, a gripping drama that explores the difficulties faced by Middle Eastern refugees living in Copenhagen.
“I definitely feel like there is something happening in the Danish underground,” he says. “Increasingly directors are coming from the sidelines instead of just coming from the Danish Film Academy. I have been in touch with some directors who, like myself, didn’t go through the academy and these are people with something on their mind.”
The son of a Danish mother and Palestinian father, Shargawi was born and raised in Copenhagen. He believes that directors who have not studied at Denmark’s prestigious national film school have to work harder but that this spurs them on to even greater creativity.
“I think it is perhaps easier to make a film once you’ve been to the Danish Film Academy because it is like a stamp of quality,” he says. “I think what is important for me and for other directors from a similar background is that we have to put in an extra special effort. We have to put ourselves at stake to finance our films and to make them more interesting. The great thing is that stories are starting to be made from something other than the normal Danish movie recipe.”
The recognition given to movies like Go With Peace Jamil, which challenge the status quo in the Danish film industry, should make it easier for young directors to emerge from the long shadow cast by Lars von Trier and the other directors who were part of the Dogme 95 movement.
“Many young directors are constantly being compared to von Trier and I think they are scarred by it,” says director Anders Morgenthaler, whose latest film is an existential animated feature called The Apple and the Worm. “Every film that comes out now is being compared with the 10 or 15 years of success that’s gone before and people are looking for the new von Trier. I think that’s stupid because directors are working with that pressure. Filmmakers should really be saying: ‘Screw this, I’ll do my own thing.’ I think what you’ll see over the next few years is a new generation of directors who’ll be doing something really different.”
Fellow Danish director Simon Staho, whose latest film Himlens Hjärta [Heaven’s Heart] opened recently in Denmark, agrees: “I think there is a great revolution just around the corner that will set everyone free.
“What will happen is that some eight-year-old kid from a town in Denmark or Sweden will make a masterpiece on her mobile phone all by herself. And she’ll blow everybody away with how films really should be made. She’ll show it on the internet where hundreds of thousands of people will see it and we’ll ask ourselves why we haven’t done things this way before.”
It could be that the first shots in this new Scandinavian cinematic revolution have already been fired by Jens Jonsson and Omar Shargawi. “I think Go With Peace Jamil struck a chord beyond Denmark because, even though it is set in Copenhagen, it tells a universal story,” says Shargawi. “I’m not saying all Danish directors should go out there and make universal stories but hopefully this film shows that it can be done. I think you’ll see some more young Danish directors making a mark overseas.”
Jonsson is equally optimistic about the future of Swedish film. “In the past it was a case of one step forward, two steps back but we are now heading in a good direction,” he says. “I think the Swedish Film Institute is not only focusing on the Swedish market but trying to make quality films that can also reach across the border. Having that focus is positive. The best-case scenario is that in a couple of years we will have even more people travelling with their films. I really hope that happens.”
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