Dear Susanne - kære Susanne - You and I met at Film School in Denmark in 1983. I was immediately intrigued by your energetic grace, highly intelligent thinking and not least your very developed sense of humor – you have a wonderful laughter! And when you screened your first student film – it was just a one-minute short but so captivating and poetic – we all immediately knew: You possessed an extraordinary talent.
Soon, you got your national breakthrough and made films based on your own ideas: Films like Dogma film Open Hearts, After the Wedding and In a Better World. With them you won wide international acclaim.
And you went on to conquer the world. Fearless, and investing not only all your artistic talent and strategic skills but also so much hard work, you broke the glass ceiling for female directors and took the world stage. First with Things We Lost in the Fire, later with your world-wide audience hit Bird Box. You also directed the most compelling John Le Carré ever, The Night Manager. Next up is big budget serial The First Lady. You work with the biggest stars, and they love and respect your straightforward, no bullshit attitude.
You have a special eye for people living their life in the diaspora or as expats, whether as refugees or people in power, soldiers or aid workers; and for their struggle to cope with family and love. Often with a twist: Your romantic comedy Love Is All You Need is about a woman, in the shape of wonderful Danish actress Trine Dyrholm who knocks James Bond – sorry, Pierce Brosnan – off his feet. The woman is recovering from breast cancer, but you never use the fact that she has no hair and only one breast, as an obstacle for the love story, and I deeply appreciate this unconventional take in a genre, that is considered so mainstream.
Regardless of genre, your focus of interest is always the space between people, and your stories embrace the grandeur and absurdity of life with your ironic wit as well as your generosity – and with FUN in the deepest existential sense of the word – making a tribute to life that touches audiences all over the world.
