In 2020, Magnus von Horn was excited to search out that his movie Sweat had been accepted into the Official Choice at Cannes, an enormous step up from his debut, The Right here After, which made Administrators’ Fortnight in 2015. The pandemic put an finish to that, however his disappointment was short-lived; this 12 months, his darkish atmospheric follow-up, The Woman With the Needle, sees him becoming a member of the large league. “That is big to me,” he beams. “The primary competitors!”
Magnus von Horn
Juan Naharro/Getty Photos
Set in Denmark throughout World Battle I, the movie stars Vic Carmen Sonne as Karoline, a younger seamstress whose soldier husband is lacking in motion. By means of a sequence of mishaps, Karolin falls pregnant, loses her job, and meets a mysterious girl named Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm) who runs each a sweet retailer and an adoption company.
Now based mostly in Poland, the place he graduated from Łódź Movie College in 2013, Von Horn has at all times pursued a profession in movie. “I’ve made movies since so long as I can keep in mind. I attempted many various issues in artwork — portray, poetry, and pictures — however filmmaking in some way clicked with me. I don’t know precisely why, however I do know that after I look again on the movies I did as an adolescent, they’re kind of precisely the identical because the movies I’m making now, thematically. There are specific sorts of tales that entice me, typically with a darkness that I believe I can categorical in filmmaking.”
Right here he discusses The Woman With the Needle…
DEADLINE: How did this movie come about?
MAGNUS VON HORN: I’m Swedish, and now I’m Polish as nicely, since I simply bought a citizenship there. I moved to Poland for movie college, and I stayed. I’ve a spouse and household there. I used to be approached by producer Malene Blenkov with this venture, which got here from an thought by the co-writer, Line Langebek Knudsen. It was simply an thought firstly, and I used to be requested to leap on board, and we ended up growing it for a really very long time. That’s the way it started and that’s how Denmark got here into the image. Which I preferred. It’s good to direct in languages that aren’t my very own. It creates a sure distance, possibly even a form of ignorance, that offers you a freedom you don’t have in case you’re working in your native language.
DEADLINE: What was the inspiration?
VON HORN: The start line was a real story, of one of the crucial horrendous and controversial crimes in Danish historical past. I don’t need to spoil issues by explaining precisely what that was, nevertheless it was a narrative that provoked me very deeply. At first, I couldn’t see a approach to inform that story, in a method that wasn’t simply exploiting the matter, or in a method that may be significant. That’s very a lot when the thought of the principle character got here in, and her journey by means of poverty, in search of a greater life in post-World Battle I Copenhagen. I started to assume, How a lot do we would like a greater life? And what value are we ready to pay for that?” Loads of these themes got here up that me. However through the growth of the movie, because it took such a very long time, I additionally had additionally private expertise of my very own that I discovered have been mirrored on this story, which grew to become loads about what we do with undesirable [children], in a method. It’s very private to me, however I’m glad to discuss it.
DEADLINE: What occurred?
VON HORN: My spouse was pregnant with a terminally ailing foetus and we went by means of an abortion. This was one thing that deeply affected me and likewise this venture.
DEADLINE: Why?
VON HORN: What we went by means of despatched us on a an emotional journey past politics. I felt remorse and doubt even when I knew we had executed the suitable factor. I discover this battle mirrored within the story of Karoline, who provides away a toddler she doesn’t need — and but there’s additionally one thing in her that regrets that call. I’ve at all times been pro-choice, I assist abortion. However we stay in Poland, and in 2020 the right-wing authorities launched a number of the strictest abortion legal guidelines on the earth and particularly in Europe. The abortion we had would have been unimaginable right now and my spouse would have been compelled to hold a toddler that may don’t have any likelihood of surviving. That’s torture. If there is no such thing as a authorized assist for ladies in such tough conditions, options are created within the shadows of society. This is likely one of the most important matters of the movie.
Trine Dyrholm in The Woman With The Needle.
DEADLINE: What was behind the choice to shoot in black and white?
VON HORN: I at all times discover it tough to consider in interval movies, once we’re speculated to be watching a narrative that came about 100 years in the past. So, it was a approach to recreate this world, a approach to really feel like we’re doing a bit little bit of time journey. That was an enormous problem. We have been impressed by pictures from that point, and likewise a bit later, which is at all times black and white and has develop into caught in our heads. It will completely different, I believe, if this was a movie a few Renaissance painter or one thing like that. That world I see in shade, as a result of it involves us by means of work, however this world I see in black and white as a result of it’s at all times been introduced to us that method, and I’ve at all times seen it that method.
And I additionally assume it’s utterly a method for us to push the fairy story side of the movie. It’s not a world that’s totally based mostly on information. It’s not precisely what Copenhagen in that point appeared like. We shot the entire movie in Poland, in areas that we felt have been visually fascinating, that represented a mode and a glance that we wished the movie to have.
DEADLINE: How did you discover Vic Carmen Sonne, who performs Karoline?
VON HORN: I met Karoline possibly two years earlier than we began manufacturing. I’ve a concern of by no means discovering my most important actress, and I discovered her in a short time. She felt she was proper for this half and, after the casting course of was over, I felt utterly the identical. She has a visible impact on me that simply makes me consider she comes from that point. I can put her in entrance of the digital camera, in these settings, and she or he works completely. She was additionally very useful later. As a result of Vic was on the venture very early, Vic launched me to different Danish actors and actresses — who’re within the movie — and different inventive folks, too. It was my first time making a movie in Denmark, and I’d by no means labored in that society of filmmakers earlier than.
Learn the digital version of Deadline’s Disruptors/Cannes journal right here.
DEADLINE: It’s a really completely different function for Trine Dyrholm. How did you get her concerned?
VON HORN: Properly, I’d at all times wished to work along with her, and I used to be simply so glad the second she mentioned sure. I’d approached when the script wasn’t actually prepared, and she or he mentioned, “No, it’s too early.” So, I stored growing it, and I returned to her [with a new draft] and requested her once more. This time, she agreed. The primary time we met, we have been having lunch, and we have been speaking in regards to the script. I may see that she that she was curious in regards to the character. She took up a toothpick and began frantically enjoying with a tooth. It was like she was giving me a bit style of what she may do with this character. She didn’t say as a lot, however I may really feel it. I may really feel she was giving me one thing, a bit present, and after that I may by no means think about anybody else. She’s type of fearless, in a method that’s essential. To enter darkness or be unsympathetic, she’s not frightened of that.
DEADLINE: It’s fascinating that we don’t actually discover out what her character’s motivations are…
VON HORN: We had a number of variations [of the script] that went extra into, let’s say, the social features of the entire thing. They’re nonetheless there, in a method. However what this character does is just not one thing I need to defend, on a sure stage. I’m additionally not going to faux, or strive, to search out the explanations for her habits. For me, it was necessary that she’s a form of a satan. And the satan has her causes…