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00:00 (dramatic music)

00:02 - My name is Nikolai Arcel.

00:08 I'm here with The Promised Land,

00:09 film starring Mads Mikkelsen and Amanda Colleen,

00:12 about a man who journeys out to the wild heath

00:16 in the '70s, '50s Denmark to try to tame the land.

00:20 - My name is Amanda Collen, and I play Ann-Barbara,

00:24 who is a really brave,

00:30 cool woman in the heath in 1755, '55, yeah.

00:35 I don't know, it's really hard to describe without spoilers,

00:39 but she's really badass, in a soft, sweet, loving way.

00:45 - The film is based on a novel by a female novelist

00:51 called Ida Jessen, who's quite big in Denmark.

00:54 This was probably her biggest bestseller book,

00:58 and also, I think, her first historical piece.

01:02 So I read that before it even came out,

01:05 and fell completely in love with it.

01:07 But it also had a lot of themes that I loved,

01:11 and some very personal things in it for me.

01:12 So I fell in love with it immediately, wanted to do it.

01:17 So it started with that book.

01:19 - Well, I think always when projects come in,

01:24 I have an instinct that says yes or no quite fast.

01:29 And when Nick called, he said a very,

01:34 very scarce description of the project,

01:37 but it was an immediate yes in my whole system.

01:40 And so it was really interesting to go from there, actually.

01:44 And two years later, we started shooting,

01:46 so I think also just time in itself is such an advantage.

01:50 But yeah, also to be able to do some period,

01:54 and to be able to give voice and body to a female in 1755,

01:59 that was, to me, really, really exciting.

02:03 Yeah, an eye-opener.

02:06 - Mads Mikkelsen plays Ludwig Kallen,

02:09 who is a very ambitious, driven man,

02:13 whose entire sole purpose in life is to become somebody.

02:17 And this film is really about how much

02:21 is he willing to sacrifice in order

02:23 to become that somebody?

02:25 And will his, I suppose you could say

02:30 that the journey, part of the journey is discovering

02:33 whether he will lose his soul or gain a soul

02:37 in this quest to become a man of importance.

02:40 I mean, the character of Anne Mamouse

02:42 is actually one of the reasons

02:43 I even fell in love with the story.

02:45 She's one of the most amazing characters in the novel,

02:48 and I really wanted to translate that into the film.

02:51 That was a really tough role to cast.

02:53 Obviously, a nine-year-old,

02:56 we were trying to find her in Denmark,

02:58 and we couldn't, we had cast like 120, 130 young girls.

03:03 And then we eventually went to Sweden,

03:07 which is our neighboring country,

03:08 where there was just this one standout, incredible girl

03:13 who we were so lucky to find in Melina Harkberg,

03:18 who was a joy to work with every single second of the film.

03:22 - Well, I think always when you work with children on set,

03:26 it creates a great vibe,

03:28 because everyone relaxes a little bit.

03:30 (laughing)

03:32 Because children are just having fun,

03:34 and I think it spreads a great vibe on set

03:38 when they're just like being kids.

03:41 And Melina is very funny and super entertaining,

03:45 and yeah, it was a joy to work with her.

03:47 - She's actually very much like her character,

03:50 she's like very intuitive and just laughs all the time.

03:55 And she couldn't remember her lines half the time,

03:58 but we just laughed at that,

03:59 because it's just so fun to be on the set with her.

04:03 - She ate a lot of candy.

04:04 - She did.

04:05 (laughing)

04:06 There's a lot of sugar rushes after eating candy.

04:08 - Yeah, yeah.

04:09 - I would say it's inspired by the true story.

04:12 Ludwig Kallen, Mads' character is real.

04:15 The shingle, the antagonist of the piece is real,

04:17 or was real.

04:19 But Ida, who wrote the novel,

04:22 has sort of fictionalized a great part of the story.

04:25 She's taken some of the events that happened

04:28 and sort of made them a little bit her own for the novel.

04:32 And since we adapted the novel,

04:33 it's not exactly a true story,

04:35 but it is, some of these events did happen.

04:37 He did go to the Heaths.

04:39 There was sort of a,

04:41 there was this antagonism and all these things.

04:42 But there's certain characters that are her inventions.

04:46 It's very fun to write,

04:47 an antagonist who knows more about life

04:50 than your hero does.

04:51 (laughing)

04:52 Because in a sense, he's always,

04:54 he's a horrible person,

04:55 but he's also usually the smartest guy in the room,

04:57 which is really fun to write.

04:59 So he would have these theories about life

05:02 and what life is,

05:03 that were probably closer to what my theory of life is,

05:07 which is that life is basically chaos.

05:09 And he would keep repeating that,

05:11 you know, in the script,

05:12 he would keep repeating that to Ludwig,

05:14 who was always like, "No, I can control my life."

05:16 So that was quite,

05:17 he was a very fun character to write.

05:19 And again, if it hadn't been for Simon,

05:22 showing up in the casting,

05:24 I think it would have been a very, very different part,

05:26 but he made it so much his own.

05:28 - Of course, when you have two years to kind of,

05:31 as I say, put a character in your pocket

05:33 and walk around with her for a while,

05:36 lots of things accumulate.

05:39 But I, from the beginning,

05:41 had quite a strong feeling that I needed to

05:46 keep her as open as possible

05:49 to let as many women take space in her,

05:53 if that makes sense.

05:54 It's not something that we've talked about,

05:56 I don't know, I can't remember.

05:59 But anyway, so there's,

06:01 I kept trying to pin her down, but I couldn't.

06:07 And I think that's very much what we see on screen.

06:10 Then we worked a lot of,

06:11 you were kind of scared that I was too,

06:15 I don't know, modern,

06:18 and so we worked a little bit on voice

06:19 and toning her down, because I'm like this.

06:24 - Yeah, I meant like this.

06:26 And then Barbara's a little bit more like this.

06:28 - Yeah, yeah.

06:29 - But I think you nailed that pretty--

06:31 - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

06:32 But so there's a lot of different prep,

06:35 but I think she's a mix, when I see her now,

06:38 she's a pretty good mix of a lot of women

06:42 that surrounds me, which I think is very beautiful,

06:47 actually, if I can say that about my own character.

06:50 I don't know.

06:52 - You can.

06:53 - Am I allowed to say that? - You can say whatever you want.

06:55 - No, there's a lot of my mom,

06:56 I mean, it's a character that,

06:59 a lot of women have gone through this over and over,

07:02 and women still go through this,

07:04 being as modern and having the same wants as needs,

07:07 and needs like I have in my life,

07:09 but the surroundings don't allow them

07:13 to say or do what they feel.

07:17 And I think when I watched it the first time,

07:19 I was really heartbroken, actually,

07:22 because the big difference between me and her today

07:27 is that I have the freedom to love,

07:29 and she didn't, and she fought for it, though.

07:34 Yeah.

07:34 - Yeah.

07:35 - You know, I think my biggest highlight

07:37 was the highlight of making this movie

07:41 was probably being on the actual Heath,

07:43 where he actually built the real house.

07:46 We were on the actual location

07:47 where we built this house,

07:49 and every morning when we would get up

07:51 very early in the morning to be ready to shoot

07:53 and see the sunrise over this amazing landscape,

07:56 it felt like being there.

07:58 It was also quite harsh at times to be there,

08:00 because it was cold and sometimes raining,

08:03 but it was just so beautiful,

08:04 and we felt that we were truly part of the story

08:07 that we were telling, which was amazing to me.

08:10 - And I think also it reflected on the whole team.

08:12 So, I mean, I said it was a scene that was my highlight,

08:16 but the whole experience was really,

08:18 for me at least, joyful and beautiful,

08:22 and the way that everyone came together

08:24 and really had personal,

08:26 I remember we shot the Christmas scene,

08:29 and Jeru does the sets and do all these amazing things.

08:32 She came to me and she whispered,

08:34 like, "I've made you a little,"

08:36 I don't know what it's called in English, "engrance."

08:39 No, like a little round thing made out of sticks or leaves

08:44 or whatever it's called.

08:45 Yeah, I just thought Barbara would maybe have made this.

08:51 So everyone kind of added to our characters

08:54 and find little special things that are so valuable

08:59 in order to make something whole, I think.

09:02 And I don't know, to me it was really special

09:05 that people kept doing that, or found a little,

09:09 Kiki found a little handkerchief

09:11 that I had in my pocket the whole time that nobody saw,

09:15 but it was just like these little secrets,

09:17 I think are super cool, yeah.

09:20 (upbeat music)

09:23 [Music]

The Promised Land | Deadline Studio at TIFF

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