Danish sales agent TrustNordisk has boarded world sales on Jacob Møller’s debut feature, Madame Ida, ahead of its world premiere in the main competition of this year’s Torino Film Festival, running from 22-30 November (see the news).
The pic promises to be “a powerful, poignant period drama about three women from three different generations who, together, attempt to break free from the fates imposed upon them in their longing for a sense of belonging”. The story, penned by the director himself, unfolds in the early 1950s, when 15-year-old Cecilia has become pregnant against her will due to a sexual assault by the warden of the orphanage in which she grew up.
To conceal her pregnancy, the orphanage decides that Cecilia is to give away her unborn child to Ida, who desperately wants to adopt and who lives alone with her maid Alma in an old, isolated mansion. Cecilia is sent out to live at the mansion for the duration of her pregnancy, and for a time, the three women constitute an odd family, where they each find respite from their loneliness, sorrow and longing. But with the arrival of the baby, the harmonious circumstances suddenly change.
The three leading roles are played by three major talents from different generations. The young Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl plays 15-year-old orphan Cecilia. She has recently been seen in Birthday Girl (2023) and As in Heaven (2021), for which she won the Best Actress Award at San Sebastián in 2021. Opposite Hofmann Lindahl is Carmen Curlers and Cry Wolf star Christine Albeck Børge in the role of Ida. Lastly, we find Karen Lise Mynster portraying the maid, Alma. She is a celebrated actress who has won numerous Danish awards throughout her career.
Møller, an alumnus of the National Film School of Denmark, graduated in 2019. His final project was the experimental short A Treatise of the Human Animal no. 38: Heartaches, a comedic and life-affirming portrayal of human beings and their romantic woes, which premiered in the Filmmakers of Tomorrow programme at Telluride.
The project’s technical crew includes cinematographer Stroud Rohde Pearce, sound editor Mathias Dehn Middelhart, composer Kaspar Kaae and editor Louis Emil Ramm Seeberg.
Madame Ida is being produced by Charlotte Hjordt for Denmark’s Zentropa, with support from the Danish Film Institute, the New Danish Screen programme, pubcaster DR and Creative Europe. Its Scandinavian distribution is being handled by Nordisk Film Distribution. The feature will hit Danish theatres on 2 December.
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