Denmark is raising a glass to its Oscar winners, celebrating Thomas Vinterberg, whose dramedy Another Round won best international film, and Mikkel Nielsen, who took home the Academy Award for best sound editing on Sound of Metal.
"Huge Danish Victory!" shouted the headline of Danish tabloid BT, which blasted the news early Monday morning, local time, that Vinterberg's Another Round had won the Oscar for best international film. The newspaper celebrated what it called a "historic night" with "two Danish awards."
Like most local news coverage, the paper focused on Vinterberg's emotional acceptance speech, in which he evoked the memory of his daughter, who was to have appeared in the film but was killed in a car accident shortly after the production began.
Denmark's double Oscar win was front-page news on every Danish paper and news sites, as well as leading the morning shows.
It's exactly a decade since a Danish film last won an Oscar: when Susanne Bier's drama In Another World took home the top international film honor in 2011.
This is the second time Vinterberg has been up for the Academy Award, having received a best international film nomination for The Hunt in 2014.
A handful of Danish outlets quoted Peter Aalbæk, head of Another Round production company Zentropa, who claimed to have had "a message from God" six months ago that the film would win. Danish television carried footage from the Zentropa offices outside Copenhagen, where the cast and crew of Another Round watched the Oscar ceremony, bursting in whoops and cheers when Vinterberg's name was called out by presenter Laura Dern.
TrustNordisk, the company which has sold Another Round worldwide, also noted what a huge success the film has been local. Released September 24 last year, in-between COVID-19 lockdowns in Denmark, Another Round sold more than 800,000 tickets, grossing more than $4 million in the territory. To compare, Chloe Zhao's best picture winner Nomadland, which had just a limited theatrical release in the U.S. because of COVID, earned between $2.5 million - $3 million for Searchlight Pictures, making it the lowest-grossing Oscar best picture winner in history.
In Denmark, Another Round has sold more than 73,000 digital copies since its digital release, becoming the best-selling film digitally of all time in the territory.
The film's Oscar wins come after Another Round won best foreign-language film at Britain's BAFTA awards and swept the 2020 European Film Awards, winning best film, best director for Vinterberg, best actor for star Mads Mikkelsen, and best screenplay honors for Vinterberg and co-writer Tobias Lindholm.
The movie has sold out worldwide, with Samuel Goldwyn Films releasing it theatrically in the U.S. on December 4, 2020 and on VOD December 18.
"From the very beginning, we knew that this film would be a seller worldwide, and we have all been very excited to experience the immense global interest in the now Academy Award-winning drama, which has taken everybody by storm and proved its universal appeal," said Susan Wendt, managing director of TrustNordisk. "We congratulate Thomas and the entire team behind the film for this impressive victory, and we are proud to be on board."
