The Gentle Pain

  • 280'
  • Denmark
  • 2019

One can't help wondering whether, some quarter-century ago, Carsten Brandt had the slightest inkling of the epic dimension the project he was then starting to conceive – The Gentle Pain – would take on in the subsequent decades. For it became epic in just about every sense of the word: the film is very long; it tells a multi-layered story characterised as much by its digressions as by its main narrative thread, which concerns a filmmaker’s attempts to make sense of the life of Thorkild Hansen, a Danish traveller/historian/writer internationally probably best known for his non-fiction novel Processen mod Hamsun (1978); and it took a long time to finish – and then sat on a shelf due to legal battles galore.

What is now finally revealed is a monument of modern(ist) cinema: a work that as much charts one man’s journey into his soul as a voyage of discovery into another artist’s mind.

Director
Carsten Brandt
Premiere
World premiere
Country of production
Denmark
Year
2019
Festival Edition
IFFR 2019
Length
280'
Medium
DCP
Original title
Den milde smerte
Languages
Danish, Swedish, English, French, Arabic, Italian
Producers
Carsten Brandt, Ulf Berggren
Production Companies
Posthus Teatret, Ulf Berggren Produktion
Sales
Posthus Teatret
Screenplay
Carsten Brandt
Cinematography
Jean-Yves Dion, Sigudur Sverrir Pálsson
Editor
Sigudur Sverrir Pálsson
Production Design
Michael A. Cronström, Klaus Kristensen
Music
Stig Christensen
Cast
Ewa Fröling, Caspar Phillipson, Michelle Sarah Guetta, Laure Calamy, Rut Cronström, Erik Thors, Kasper Leisner
Director
Carsten Brandt
Premiere
World premiere
Country of production
Denmark
Year
2019
Festival Edition
IFFR 2019
Length
280'
Medium
DCP
Original title
Den milde smerte
Languages
Danish, Swedish, English, French, Arabic, Italian
Producers
Carsten Brandt, Ulf Berggren
Production Companies
Posthus Teatret, Ulf Berggren Produktion
Sales
Posthus Teatret
Screenplay
Carsten Brandt
Cinematography
Jean-Yves Dion, Sigudur Sverrir Pálsson
Editor
Sigudur Sverrir Pálsson
Production Design
Michael A. Cronström, Klaus Kristensen
Music
Stig Christensen
Cast
Ewa Fröling, Caspar Phillipson, Michelle Sarah Guetta, Laure Calamy, Rut Cronström, Erik Thors, Kasper Leisner