Canal+ Laureate Andrias Hogenni Locks Partners for Wedding-Themed Pic (EXCLUSIVE)

Annika Pham
·2 min read

Faroese-born emerging director Andrias Høgenni, winner of a Canal+ award at Cannes Critics’ Week in 2021 with his short film “Illi illa meint,” just got married this summer.

His project “Anything for Her,” introduced at this year’s Nordic Co-Production Market in Haugesund, is precisely about a wedding, and much more. Family conflicts, especially with step-parents involved, and the uniquely chaotic nature of a Faroese wedding set in a tightly-knit community of 52,000 souls.

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Spearheaded by Danish production partners Johannes Rothaus Nørregaard of Studiocanal-backed SAM Productions (“Borgen”) and Rikke Tambo Andersen of Tambo Film (“The Penultimate”), the project has secured co-production partners from France and the Faroe Islands, Variety has learned.

La Rochelle-based In Vivo Films, behind the 2022 Toronto-bound “Autobiography” and 2019 Rotterdam entry “La Fortaleza,” has come on board at script stage, together with the leading Faroese producer, Jón Hammer of “Trom” backer Kyk Pictures.

Tambo Andersen, set to pitch the project at Haugesund’s Co-pro Market on Aug. 24, said Rothaus Nørregaard, who produced Høgenni’s breakthough short “Illi illa meint,” approached her with it less than a year ago. The two producers, Høgenni, as well as the film’s scriptwriter Anders Jeelsmark Mortensen (“Noia”), are all graduates from the indie Danish film school Super16. “Andrias graduated one year after me, and I remember already then, being dazzled by his talent,” she said.

Set on a summer day in Runavík on the Faroe Islands, the film chronicles the misadventures of Jákup. All he wants is his step-daughter’s happiness for her wedding day. But he accidentally invites Stina’s biological father, the estranged drunkard Anton. Jakúp must race against the time to stop Anton from ruining the day.

“I want to show a family that reveals itself in the confines of a crowded and unstructured wedding feasts,” Høgenni said in a director’s statement. “Our anchor for the story is the foster-father of the bride and his-still lingering-anxiety about not being the biological father,” he added, mentioning the “raw honesty and humour” that he will use “to draw the audience into the emotions of the story.”

The pic is scheduled to start production in Spring 2023.

Tambo Andersen will be looking for distributors and sales at Haugesund’s New Nordic Films, which runs from Aug. 23-26.

Besides “Anything for Her,” the auteur-driven Danish producer has a rich slate of fiction, documentary and TV projects in various stages of production. Those include “Levitating Skin” by Jonas Kærup Hjort, whose striking debut “The Penultimate” premiered on HBO Max, and the documentary “Resorts” by Mette Carla Albrechtsen (“Venus”), to be delivered later this year.

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