Peter Aalbæk Jensen

Danish film has never felt stronger on the international stage than it did with the Dogme films, which at the world premiere of 'The Party' and 'The Idiots' during the Cannes Film Festival in 1998 put Denmark on the film world map. Another eight films under the strict Dogme rules followed and created great international careers for several of the talents in front of and behind the handheld camera. Thomas Vinterberg, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, Paprika Steen, Ulrich Thomsen, Trine Dyrholm, Iben Hjejle, Anders W. Berthelsen, Lone Scherfig, Sonja Richter and many more of the country's greatest filmmakers look back on when Denmark became Dogme.

The dangerous paranoia lurking beneath the seemingly idyllic existence of a family of hermits living on a remote island begins to come to the fore when their daughter starts to question her parents' worldview.

Copenhagen, Denmark, 2018. A frightening discovery is made in an old apartment. The subsequent investigation of Department Q members leads them to an infamous institution for girls that was suddenly closed in the early sixties.

Failed architect, engineer and vicious murderer Jack narrates the details of some of his most elaborately orchestrated crimes, each of them a towering piece of art that defines his life's work as a serial killer for twelve years.

The moving love story of a dancer on the rollercoaster ride of her life, a drama about the rise and fall of a modern woman as she summons the courage to face her greatest trial.

Frederik is the headmaster of a private school and one day he is being accused of stealing 12 million Danish crowns from the school. But everything is not as simple as it might seem. Frederik has been living with a tumor in his brain for the last 3 years and it has changed his personality. Now his wife Mia and the defense lawyer Bernard have to try and get Frederik acquitted of all charges.

In a dystopian realm underneath the ground, a mysterious boss dictates the rules of the young people living and working here. They each work in a club, taking care of dedicated club members day after day. It is a lonely life with no escape. Carla is responsible for the Aquarium Club, Zac is in charge of the Motor Club. When their paths cross, a whole new world opens.

Denmark, 2016. A blurred note is found in a bottle that has traveled across the ocean for a long time. After deciphering the cryptic note, Department Q members follow a sinister trail that leads them to investigate a case that occurred in 2008. At the same time, new tragic events take place that test their faith and deepest beliefs.

Denmark, 2014. A former police officer asks Carl Mørck, head of Department Q, to find out who brutally killed his young twins in 1994. Although a local inhabitant confessed and was convicted of murder, Carl and his partner Assad soon realize that there is something in the case resolution that is terribly wrong.

A man named Seligman finds a fainted wounded woman in an alley and he brings her home. She tells him that her name is Joe and that she is nymphomaniac. Joe tells her life and sexual experiences with hundreds of men since she was a young teenager while Seligman tells about his hobbies, such as fly fishing, reading about Fibonacci numbers or listening to organ music.

The continuation of Joe's sexually dictated life delves into the darker aspects of her adult life and what led to her being in Seligman's care.

Denmark, 2013. Police officers Carl Mørck and Hafez el-Assad, sole members of Department Q, which is focused on closing cold cases, investigate the disappearance of politician Merete Lynggaard, vanished when she and her brother were traveling aboard a ferry five years ago.

As one of the world's best restaurants opens for its final evening, a couple in the midst of a divorce who made their reservation a year ago (before separating) reunite for a once-in-lifetime meal.

Adrian is a classic outsider. His playful, dreamy imagination distracts him from everyday life, for the reality he lives in could not be more different. Neither his chronically depressed uncle nor his overworked grandmother understand the ten-year-old’s games. His mother abandoned him when he was very young and he is bullied at school. Just as news arrives that three children are missing, a new family moves in next door. Adrian develops a close relationship to their tomboyish, ten-year-old daughter Nicole and believes he is getting close to solving the mys- tery of the missing children. New Zealand forms the backdrop for this universal story for adults and those who have never wanted to grow up. It is a story about friendship and loneliness, emotions which Adrian already feels so poignantly as a child. The Danish first-time director’s expressive visual language dramatically merges water and air, reality and a hint of fantasy.

Based on a true story. On 27 April 1940, Luftwaffe pilot Horst Schopis' Heinkel 111 bomber is shot down near Grotli by an RAF Blackburn Skua L2940 fighter, which then crash-lands. The surviving German and English crew members begin to at shoot each other, but later find themselves huddled up in the same cabin. In order to survive the harsh winter in the Norwegian wilderness, they have to stand together. An unlikely, lifelong friendship blossoms.

In Glasgow, Scotland, while a mysterious pandemic begins to spread around the world, Susan, a brilliant epidemiologist, falls in love with Michael, a skillful cook.

Two sisters find their already strained relationship challenged as a mysterious new planet threatens to collide with Earth.

Two Danish comedians join the director on a trip to North Korea, where they have been allowed access under the pretext of wanting to perform a vaudeville act.

The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.

Dimension is a short film written and directed by Lars von Trier, released in 2010. The film was shot in three-minute segments over several years. The original intention was to continue production for a period of 30 years for a final release in 2024. However, von Trier lost interest in the project and it was shelved in the late 1990s. The short film consists of the completed footage at the time the film was abandoned.

A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.

While on a trip to Thailand, a successful American businessman tries to radically change his life. Back in New York, his wife and daughter find their relationship with their live-in Filipino maid changing around them. At the same time, in the Philippines, the maid's family struggles to deal with her absence.

Three girls meet by chance in a hospital. Struggling to come to terms with their fate, they all look back on a decisive moment in their life: Sara, a professional swimmer relentlessly urged on by her ambitious father, was deprived of her only real chance of happiness. Mette has left her deeply religious family, finding it too hard to bear that they have accepted her fate while she hasn't. And Stephanie has brutally rejected her boyfriend in fear of being rejected herself. Although their stories are very different, the three girls are brought together in their search for love and companionship. Based on the Oscar nominated short fiction »At Night«

Set and shot in the city of Durban, My Black Little Heart pummels the viewer into a world where Internet porn on Durban’s beach front meets Nigerian voodoo in the inner city and a young girl from the wrong side of the track-marks finds herself stuck in a hazy sub-city seaside vortex of decrepit flats, poisoned streets and abandoned office blocks littered with self mutilators, ex-cons, gangsters, street delinquents, hustlers and addicts.

An Arabic tale that takes place in Scandinavia. About ancient religious hatred, about love, punishment, guilt and redemption, about being responsible for one's own actions and refusing a path of violence. Jamil stands in the middle. He is fighting the war of his life; a war within himself.

Two couples, old friends, end up in a heated debate over adultery at a dinner party.

A tragic story about Anna who dreams of one thing only: making it as an actress. She moves from Sweden to Copenhagen to pursue her dream. But fate has something else in store for her. Though she struggles to give her 4-month-old daughter a good start in life, she ultimately fails to unite her dream of acting with a safe and loving environment for her child, culminating in a desperate act that has fatal consequences for Anna and her daughter.

A satirical drama revealing the consequences of the Danish government's "New Copenhagen Criteria", a new policy aiming at securing the nation's survival. Citizens who fail to meet the criteria - those who have received more from society than what they have contributed - are eliminated.

The last summer the five boys are together in Falkenberg. They are now grown up to be young men, on their way out into the world. At least most of them.

An IT company hires an actor to serve as the company's president in order to help the business get sold to a cranky Icelander.

The story of August who loses his beloved sister Christina, a former porn star known as The Princess. He adopts Christina's five-year-old daughter Mia. Weighed down by grief and guilt, August breaks down and with Mia in tow, he embarks on a mission of vengeance to erase Christina's pornographic legacy.

A drama about a boy who's inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and challenges repressive school authority in 1969 Denmark.

A manager of an orphanage in India is sent to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he discovers a life-altering family secret.

Asst. Director Tómas Gislason and Producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen reflects on their "faecal location" when they shot Lars von Trier's Europa (1991) in Poland.

Memorable anecdotes about film director Lars von Trier told by people he has worked with on his films.

After Ingrid leaves John, he allows himself to be pulled into a mystical and scary world where it is impossible to separate truth from lies.

In a blue-collar American town, a group of teens bands together to form the Dandies, a gang of gunslingers led by Dick Dandelion. Following a code of strict pacifism at odds with the fact that they all carry guns, the group eventually lets in Sebastian, the grandson of Dick's childhood nanny, Clarabelle, who fears the other gangs in the area. Dick and company try to protect Clarabelle, but events transpire that push the gang past posturing.

Documentary with interviews of the cast and crew of Lars von Trier's 1991 film "Europa."

A Danish officer, Michael, is sent away to the International Security Assistance Force operation in Afghanistan for three months. His first mission there is to find a young radar technician who had been separated from his squad some days earlier. While on the search, his helicopter is shot down and he is taken as a prisoner of war, but is reported dead to the family.

DAY AND NIGHT is about people that love and want to be loved. It's the story of a father, his young son, his unfaithful wife, her secret lover, his young mistress, his lonely sister, his forgetful mother, a fanatic football coach, a pregnant whore and an angel disguised as an old man. They are all looking for the answer to the same question: "If love is the answer - what is the question?"

Martje is the manager of a successful laundry service, but in her personal life she struggles with her self-image after the amputation of one of her breasts. After she is humiliated when Loe, one of her employees, is startled by the discovery of her prosthesis during foreplay, she imprisons him in the laundry plant. As Loe is slowly dying in imprisonment, Martje loses contact with reality and starts imagining having a family with him.

Lars von Trier challenges his mentor, filmmaker Jørgen Leth, to remake Leth’s 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times, each with a different set of bizarre and challenging rules.

Caroline is forced to leave her unfaithful boyfriend, and the only place she can crash is with her sister Sarah, with whom she does not get along. Sarah graciously offers Caroline a tiny room in her apartment and decides to help her find Mr. Right. Caroline isn't sure she's cut out for the dating game, but Sarah assures her there's nothing to it. Caroline is sent on a series of grueling and comic dates with everything from nimble pickup artists, to adventure sports freaks and a karaokesinging stockbroker. But in the end what the two sisters really find is themselves.

Caroline is forced to leave her unfaithful boyfriend, and the only place she can crash is with her sister Sarah, with whom she does not get along. Sarah graciously offers Caroline a tiny room in her apartment and decides to help her find Mr. Right. Caroline isn't sure she's cut out for the dating game, but Sarah assures her there's nothing to it. Caroline is sent on a series of grueling and comic dates with everything from nimble pickup artists, to adventure sports freaks and a karaokesinging stockbroker. But in the end what the two sisters really find is themselves.

The story revolves around Jakob, Bo and Mikkel - three friends who spend their days lusting over unattainable women and engaging in a variety of illegal activities (i.e. they'll rent a movie and then break into a house to watch it). After he's assigned to work with Mathilde on a school project, Jakob finds himself falling for the girl - despite the fact that Mikkel has been secretly lusting after her for years...

A barren soundstage is stylishly utilized to create a minimalist small-town setting in which a mysterious woman named Grace hides from the criminals who pursue her. The town is two-faced and offers to harbor Grace as long as she can make it worth their effort, so Grace works hard under the employ of various townspeople to win their favor. Tensions flare, however, and Grace's status as a helpless outsider provokes vicious contempt and abuse from the citizens of Dogville.

Skagerrak is the story of being hit by happiness when you least expect it. In their late twenties and tired of partying their way around the world, Danish Marie and Irish Sophie come ashore in Northern Scotland. After another drunken night they are soon parted from all their accumulated cash. Out of money and out of luck ambitious Sophie pressures Marie into accepting a lucrative job as surrogate mother. Months on, Marie finds herself alone, life having taken a dramatic turn. Heavily pregnant, and wanting to terminate her pregnancy, she's on the run from the future parents, searching for Sophie's old flame, Ken. In a case of mistaken identity, Marie ends up in hiding with three strange men in a seedy Glasgow garage. But then happiness strikes again.

The story of two lovers and their attempts to save their relationship in a near-future world on the brink of cosmic collapse. John, and world-famous ice skating star, Elena, are about to sign divorce papers when they realise that, in spite of everything happening around them, their love is worth fighting for. It's All About Love is a fresh take on modern love and future life as two lovers struggle in a conspiracy of epic proportions.

The strange comedy film of two close brothers; one, Wilbur, who wants to kill himself, and the other, Harbour, who tries to prevent this. When their father dies leaving them his bookstore they meet a woman who makes their lives a bit better yet with a bit more trouble as well.

Cecilie and Joachim are about to get married when a freak car accident leaves Joachim disabled, throwing their lives into a spin. The driver of the other car, Marie, and her family don’t get off lightly, either. Her husband Niels works in the hospital where he meets Cecilie and falls madly in love with her.

Svensson is a wealthy, aging blusterer who has just had a rather unusual funeral for his late wife and is now on his way to Spain with his cracker of a young mistress. But his trip is delayed when a lawyer turns up with a paternity suit. With a young undertaker as the new chauffeur at the wheel of his Jag, he sets off to confront the woman who claims to be the mother of his unknown daughter, turning his life and that of his companion upside down in the process.

Quixotic Martino Sclavi dives deep into the Danish film scene to uncover the truth behind the Dogme 95 Manifesto, along the way the film systematically breaks each and every one of the Dogme 'vows of chastity' - employing special effects, comedy sound design, and a singing narrator to boot.

The girl Eva's parents are too busy at their jobs in the airport to go on summer vacation with her, so she decides to go with her grandmother in the attempt to find Eva's grandfather Åge, who used to be a pilot.

A group of strangers find friendship, family and love within an Italian beginners’ course.

Kaj is a stubborn man with a great deal of pride. The former chef lives in a council flat. He has wasted his life and is now on a council job training scheme for the long-term unemployed, where he refuses to let the foreman of the activation project boss him about. When Kaj's daughter, with whom he has not been in touch for nineteen years, moves into the same council estate on the run from her violent husband, a change comes over Kaj. His initial instinct is to avoid her, but by chance he ends up helping to look after Jonas, her six-year-old son. For the first time for years Kaj need not survive on his own devices. Now he has responsibilities and a family of his own.

Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, escaping life's troubles - even if just for a moment - by dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.

Stranded in the heat of a barren African desert, eleven bus-passengers shelter in the remnants of an abandoned town. As rescue grows more remote by the day and anxiety deepens, an idea emerges: why not stage a play. However the choice of King Lear only manages to plunge this disparate group of travelers into turmoil as they struggle to overcome both nature's wrath and their own morality.

HotMen CoolBoyz (or H.M.C.B.) is a Danish adult film directed by Knud Vesterskov and starring Ron Athey and Billy Herrington. It is the only gay hardcore pornographic film ever produced by an established mainstream film company, yet upon its release was almost completely ignored by the Danish press, and only later started to gain an international reputation for its unique artistic imagery.

The summer of '58, the year Sweden almost won the world championship in soccer over Brazil, Yngve Johansson accepts two children to live with him during the summer, as told through the eyes of a young boy. His name is Mårten, and the other child's name is Annika. She is a rough girl, with many problems. The three of them do not get along, and Yngve is a true dictator to the children's eyes. However, when the children discover that their new guardian has a crush on their teacher (Cecilia Nilsson), they do what they can to bring the two together. Soon enough, the three will discover that they have a lot more in common than they previously imagined, and together they can make their lives worth living again. This is a sweet story about life in Sweden in the mid 1900's. It is about family, love, hate, innocent friendship that we all can relate to, and much, much more...

In the middle ages a small Greenlandic boy comes drifting with an Iceberg to a remote and superstitious settlement in Iceland and is believed to be an evil spirit by his looks. He saves a young boy from an avalanche and they become friends. The young Icelandic boy has to fight for his friends existence against the ignorant villagers, who want him imprisoned or even killed

The story of an Icelandic man and his slow descent into madness. Along his journey he meets Dagný, the initial cause of his breakdown. Other people he meets in the asylum have been committed for various reasons, such as signing cheques for Adolf Hitler and, believing themselves to be writing songs for the Beatles and telepathically transmitting to the band.

36-year old Mila makes a bet that she can make a photo-report from inside the Pink Prison. She does not manage to get in legally, but at night she breaks into the prison. This is the start of a different erotic adventures.

Based on director Lotte Svendsen's own memories of her childhood on the Baltic island of Bornholm, but though it is set in 1981 the conflicts portrayed do not seem far away. At the start of the film Lars Erik and his wife Sonja are doing well on the Baltic island of Bornholm. Lars Erik is a successful fisherman, Sonja is a traditional housewife, proud of their new house bulging with consumer goods. Their love for each other is the sturdy footing on which their home is founded. Lars Erik employs three men on his trawler, and spends as fast as he earns, so when fishing quotas are cut he faces a crisis. One by one his men leave the boat, but he refuses to give up. Being a fisherman is like being a farmer - you depend on the wealth of mother nature herself. However, mother nature is like romance, highly capricious!

A stranger arrives in Copenhagen from a plane from Romania. Shortly after the power is lost in the whole city.

Two teenage girls in small-town Sweden. Elin is beautiful, popular, and bored with life. Agnes is friendless, sad, and secretly in love with Elin.

The waitresses at a Copenhagen bar find themselves listening to and advising various clients who wander in to unburden their current problems. The Blue Monk is so named because its jukebox constantly plays music by jazz musician Thelonius Monk. ...The Blue Monk

Charming desperado Ossy, carrying a deadly secret, tracks down his childhood pal Jimmy in Iceland. But Jimmy, now with a family and a regular job, will do anything to hide his past.

Constance, a young woman, arrives at the mansion of the experienced Lola, where she is initiated into the mysteries of sexuality.

With his first Dogma-95 film director Lars von Trier opens up a completely new film platform. With a mix of home-video and documentary styles the film tells the story of a group of young people who have decided to get to know their “inner-idiots” and thus not only facing and breaking their outer appearance but also their inner.

Lucky People Center International takes us on a journey around the world through human souls. Music's rhythms and the film's pulsing form reminiscent of the music video aesthetics and gives the documentary a new face. The film traveled around the world for two years to find people and lifestyles that reflect the world before 2000.

Mona is a young woman, engaged to a man who never shows up. She relies strongly on her supportive friend, Anne. Mona suspects that Anne's psychologist, Dr. Lark, is acting funny towards her friend, and decides to investigate. Mona and Anne will find themselves embroiled in a strange world of psychiatry and fanaticism, in which both young women's lives will be endangered.

A Jewish family leaves Germany after surviving the Holocaust and heads to Norway. Mendel, their youngest son, is too young to make sense of the Holocaust but tries to comprehend his family's actions during the war and their nightmares now. His imagination frequently runs away from him.

Two comedians set out to make their own exploitation video.

The two medicated low-lifes Carsten and Peter are long time partners, an old flame of Peter's turns up to tell him that he has a twelve year old daughter, whom he should present himself to. Her adoptive father is a mean bastard, and incestive undertones lies in the relationship between the two. The daughter escapes from her adoptive father, turns up at Peter's place, and Carsten, Peter, and the daughter escapes to Sweden.

Devil's Island is a bitter sweet tale of Iceland in the fifties. Life is rough in Reykjavik's post-war slum of Camp Thule, where the abandoned US military barracks have been turned into makeshift homes. Struggling wives and their hard-working husbands try to make ends meet. The younger generation dreams of dollars, Rock'n'Roll and the American way of life. To celebrate or to drown their misery - they're never short of a good reason to booze. Devil's Island vividly depicts the everyday life of a wacky family, their neighbours and friends and shows how some of their dreams come true and others don't.

A drug pusher grows increasingly desperate after a botched deal leaves him with a large debt to a ruthless drug lord.

In a small and conservative Scottish village, a woman's paralytic husband convinces her to have extramarital intercourse so she can tell him about it and give him a reason for living.

The basic story of a young criminal not quite living up to his won ideals of "not to give a damn" sidesteps out of his criminal career while dragging his younger brother into it, could have been interesting. Unfortunately the implementation is simply not good enough. As so often with Danish movies, there is little appreciation for detail thus leaving us with hoodlums talking like they've done time at a business academy rather than a prison. Dialects completely out of here and idiosyncratic bikers without bikes or even character for that matter. An ever accelerating surrealism towards the end doesn't help to clear the slow pace of this film but it does give a glimpse of what the story could have unfolded to become.

Anton is 10 years old. Anton's father was a jet fighter pilot who died in an accident. Anton's mother told Anton that his father is flying angels around in heaven. Anton is obsessed with aeroplanes (his bedroom is full of models and posters) and is (re-)building a full-size aeroplane in the Garage. He plans to use this aeroplane to fly up to his father. The film is about Anton coming to terms with his father's death and about friends, enemies and first love.

Harry works as a hairdresser in a mental hospital. He likes to play bingo and is married to Anna. One day he meets the cleaning lady Sonja.

Set in 1962 during the Berlin crisis, the contented lifestyle of Carmen and her kid brother, whom she's nicknamed Babyface, comes to an abrupt end when their parents acrimoniously separate.

Set in the neurosurgical ward of Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet, the city and country's main hospital, nicknamed "Riget", a number of characters, staff and patients alike, encounter bizarre phenomena, both human and supernatural.

Hindu god Indra has a daughter Agnes, who visits Earth to find out if people have legitimate complaints. She marries a lawyer from Bergen and has children, but is disillusioned by marriage and embarks on a journey among men.

Jan thinks he is Swedish-Danish, but after his mother's death he discovers he was adopted. As his world begins to fall apart, he decides to find his birth parents. The hunt leads him to Portugal - in a taxi - where more surprises await him.

Nick is a handsome 13-year-old runaway whose search for a family leads him into the arms of male prostitution. While Nick's sexual exploits with strange men keep his pockets lined with cash, the experience does nothing to preserve his waning innocence. Soon enough, he's as hardened as a man three times his age.

Nick is a handsome 13-year-old runaway whose search for a family leads him into the arms of male prostitution. While Nick's sexual exploits with strange men keep his pockets lined with cash, the experience does nothing to preserve his waning innocence. Soon enough, he's as hardened as a man three times his age.

Postwar Germany, 1945. Leopold Kessler, an American of German descent, works as a sleeping car conductor for the Zentropa railway line. When he meets Katharina Hartmann, the railroad owner's daughter, and they fall in love, his life intersects with the dark and violent path of a mysterious organization opposed to the United States army military occupation.

Benjamin act as a moral guardian as he saves both a female thief and a child during Christmas in a futuristic Denmark.

Benjamin act as a moral guardian as he saves both a female thief and a child during Christmas in a futuristic Denmark.

The neighbourhood is tough. New-built concrete towers, which are not yet completely finished but already slum. Daily police raids. Daily suicide jumps from the roofs. Here lives Sally in a two-bedroom, with her parents and younger brother. Sally is dreaming big. She wants to be a fighter pilot, and she wants to be rich! She has already started her own business, collecting empty bottles and bits and pieces of scraps. And Sally don't care much for the immigrants in her area. She takes every opportunity to vent her inner racist. Turkish Zuhal move in with his family. "A new flock of Bedouins" Sally condescendingly comments. But what she does not know is that this will be one of the major turning points in her life ...

A series of ten black and white shorts.