In 2020, Magnus von Horn was excited to seek 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 yr, his darkish atmospheric follow-up, The Woman With the Needle, sees him becoming a member of the massive league. “That is enormous to me,” he beams. “The principle competitors!”
Magnus von Horn
Juan Naharro/Getty Pictures
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 Faculty in 2013, Von Horn has at all times pursued a profession in movie. “I’ve made movies since so long as I can bear in mind. I attempted many alternative issues in artwork — portray, poetry, and pictures — however filmmaking by some means clicked with me. I don’t know precisely why, however I do know that once I look again on the movies I did as a youngster, they’re kind of precisely the identical because the movies I’m making now, thematically. There are specific sorts of tales that appeal to me, usually with a darkness that I feel 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 properly, since I simply acquired 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 concept by the co-writer, Line Langebek Knudsen. It was simply an concept originally, 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 favored. 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 provides you a freedom you don’t have if you happen to’re working in your native language.
DEADLINE: What was the inspiration?
VON HORN: The start line was a real story, of one of the vital 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 strategy to inform that story, in a means that wasn’t simply exploiting the matter, or in a means that may be significant. That’s very a lot when the concept 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 suppose, How a lot do we would like a greater life? And what worth are we ready to pay for that?” Lots of these themes got here up that me. However in the course of 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 had been mirrored on this story, which grew to become so much about what we do with undesirable [children], in a means. It’s very private to me, however I’m pleased to talk about it.
DEADLINE: What occurred?
VON HORN: My spouse was pregnant with a terminally in poor health foetus and we went by means of an abortion. This was one thing that deeply affected me and in addition 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 achieved the best factor. I discover this battle mirrored within the story of Karoline, who offers away a baby 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 help 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 not possible right now and my spouse would have been compelled to hold a baby that may don’t have any probability of surviving. That’s torture. If there is no such thing as a authorized help for girls in such tough conditions, options are created within the shadows of society. This is likely one of the foremost 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 strategy to recreate this world, a strategy to really feel like we’re doing slightly little bit of time journey. That was an enormous problem. We had been impressed by pictures from that point, and in addition slightly later, which is at all times black and white and has grow to be caught in our heads. It could completely different, I feel, if this was a movie a few Renaissance painter or one thing like that. That world I see in coloration, 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 offered to us that means, and I’ve at all times seen it that means.
And I additionally suppose it’s utterly a means for us to push the fairy story facet of the movie. It’s not a world that’s fully based mostly on details. It’s not precisely what Copenhagen in that point regarded like. We shot the entire movie in Poland, in areas that we felt had been visually attention-grabbing, that represented a mode and a glance that we needed 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 foremost 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 he or she 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 individuals, 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: Effectively, I’d at all times needed to work together with her, and I used to be simply so pleased the second she mentioned sure. I’d approached when the script wasn’t actually prepared, and he or she mentioned, “No, it’s too early.” So, I saved 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 had been having lunch, and we had been speaking concerning the script. I might see that she that she was curious concerning the character. She took up a toothpick and began frantically enjoying with a tooth. It was like she was giving me slightly style of what she might do with this character. She didn’t say as a lot, however I might really feel it. I might really feel she was giving me one thing, slightly present, and after that I might by no means think about anybody else. She’s type of fearless, in a means that’s needed. To enter darkness or be unsympathetic, she’s not fearful of that.
DEADLINE: It’s attention-grabbing 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 facets of the entire thing. They’re nonetheless there, in a means. However what this character does will not be one thing I need to defend, on a sure stage. I’m additionally not going to fake, or attempt, to seek out the explanations for her habits. For me, it was essential that she’s a form of a satan. And the satan has her causes…
