Christian Slater (Mr. Robot), Dree Hemingway (Starlet), and Danish star Trine Dyrholm (Queen of Hearts) have signed on to star in Incidents of Intimacy, from director Jasper Just. Johannes Lilleøre, Julie Agnete Vang, Laura Drasbæk and Michael Moritzen will co-star.
The low-budget feature will mark Just’s directorial debut, and be the second in the new Dogma25 slate of ambitious arthouse features from producer Zentropa.
Dyrholm, whose credits include Susanne Bier’s Oscar-winner In a Better World, Magnus von Horn’s The Girl With The Needle and Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair, will play Linda, an intimacy coordinator who struggles to form intimate connections. Unable to acknowledge or access her own feelings, she steals objects from people instead of getting close to them, filing her loot in an archive of intimacy in her cupboard.
The project will see Slater return to Danish cinema after co-starring Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac.
Just is best known as a visual artist. He represented Denmark at the 2013 Venice Biennale and has presented solo exhibitions around the world. Much of his work deconstructs conventional representations of gender, love, social norms in mainstream cinema. Incidents of Intimacy will be his first feature as a director. Just co-wrote the script together with Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen (The Quiet Migration).
The film will be the second produced under the Dogma25 label, a slate of arthouse features to be made under a strict “vow of chastity” that requires the directors to comply with several enforced restrictions, including keeping the crew to a maximum of ten people, having at least half of the film be dialogue-free, and a ban on using the Internet for research or development. The films each have a maximum budget of 10 million Danish Krone (around $1.5 million) with backing from Zentropa, Danish public broadcaster DR, and Nordisk Film Distribution. All the movies will be released theatrically in Denmark via Nordisk Film, with Netflix taking streaming rights in the Nordics. TrustNordisk is handling world sales.
Zentropa unveiled the Dogma25 concept at the Cannes Film Festival last year together with the group’s five directors: Just, May el-Toukhy (Queen of Hearts), Milad Alami (Opponent), Annika Berg (Team Hurricane), and Isabella Eklöf (Kalak). The group takes its name from the Dogme 95 movement, started by Danish directors Lars Von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg (The Celebration) Kristian Levring (The King is Alive) and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen (Mifune), another back-to-basics film movement that is credited with revitalizing indie cinema in the late ’90s.T
The movement has already inspired a similar project in Germany, with director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), Ilker Çatak (The Teacher’s Lounge), Nora Fingscheidt (The Outrun), Helene Hegemann (Axolotl Overkill) and Kurdwin Ayub (Mond) announcing their own Dogma 25 slate.