Danish epic The Promised Land, recently shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Award for Best International Feature, returns to Scandinavia House on Sunday, January 14!
In 18th-century Denmark, Captain Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) — a proud, ambitious, but impoverished war hero — sets out to tame a vast, uninhabitable land on which seemingly nothing can grow. He seeks to start farming crops, build a colony in the name of the King, and gain a noble title for himself. This beautiful but forbidding area also happens to be under the rule of the merciless Frederik De Schinkel, a preening nobleman who realizes the threat Kahlen represents to his power. Struggling against the elements and local brigands, Kahlen is joined by a couple who has fled the clutches of the rapacious De Schinkel. As this group of misfits begins to build a small community in this inhospitable place, De Schinkel swears vengeance, and the confrontation between him and Kahlen promises to be as violent and intense as these two men.
An official selection at Venice International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and others, Nikolaj Arcel’s (Oscar®-nominated for A Royal Affair) sweeping film has been hailed as “the kind of ravishing, rousing epic we don’t really get much of anymore” (Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine).
“Mads Mikkelsen smolders magnificently. He brings magnetic stoicism, imposing physicality and soulful introspection to a character who might have been at home in a John Ford saga”—(David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter)
“End-to-end entertaining. A kind of Nordic western with old-fashioned pleasures: romance, villainy, adventure, heroism, a bloody, gripping climax, and loads of gorgeous widescreen vistas along the way”—(Taylor Antrim, Vogue)
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Nikolaj Arcel has written a large number of scripts including the adaptation of the first film in the highly acclaimed Millennium trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. (2009) The film based on the bestselling book by, Stieg Larsson earned him a BAFTA nomination in 2011. His feature film A Royal Affair, which he both wrote and directed, won the Silver Bear for best script at Berlin International Film Festival in 2012 and was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language category in 2013. Since then Arcel has directed The Dark Tower and has written a number of critically acclaimed films, which makes him one of the most sought after both writers and directors in Scandinavia.