Denmark has selected Magnus von Horn’s The Girl With the Needle as its Oscar submission for the Best International Feature Film category.
Starring Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm, The Girl With the Needle riffs on one of Denmark’s most notorious murder cases to weave a poetic and dark fairytale about the people living on the margins in the aftermath of the First World War. Deadline’s review called the film, “an unequivocal and beguiling triumph.”
Karoline (Sonne), a young factory worker, is struggling to survive in post WW1 Copenhagen. When she finds herself unemployed, abandoned and pregnant, she meets Dagmar (Dyrholm), a charismatic woman running an underground adoption agency, helping mothers to find foster homes for their unwanted children. With nowhere else to turn, Karoline takes on the role of a wet-nurse. A strong connection is formed between the two women, but Karoline’s world shatters when she stumbles upon the shocking truth behind her work.
Von Horn and Line Langebek co-wrote the screenplay and Malene Blenkov and Mariusz Włodarski produced the film for Nordisk Film Creative Alliance with support from The Danish Film Institute, The Swedish Film Institute, The Polish Film Institute, Nordisk Film & TV Fond and Eurimages, among others.
The film will have its theatrical premiere in New York and Los Angeles on December 6 via MUBI. The Match Factory holds world sales rights.
Jacob Neiiendam, Head of International at The Danish Film Institute and chairperson of the Danish Oscar Submitting Committee, said of the unanimous selection, “The committee found The Girl With the Needle the strongest Danish candidate to secure an Oscar nomination this year.”
The Girl With the Needle debuted in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and is von Horn’s first Danish-language feature. His Swedish-produced feature debut, The Here After, premiered in Directors’ Fortnight in 2015, while his second feature film, the Polish-produced Sweat, was part of the official program of the Covid-canceled Cannes in 2020.
Four Danish films have won an Oscar in the International Feature Film category: Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round (2021), Susanne Bier’s In a Better World (2011), Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror (1989) and Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast (1988).
The Girl With the Needle was chosen from a shortlist of three films that also included Echo of You by Zara Zerny and Sons by Gustav Möller.