Directed by Kasper Barfoed (The Numbers Station; The Candidate; The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar) and starring Ulrich Thomsen (The Commune; The Notebook; The International; The Thing; The Inheritance), Mikkel Boe Følsgaard (Land of Mine; A Royal Affair; The Keeper of Lost Causes) and Cyron Melville (A Royal Affair; The Killing (TV Series)).
Sports Drama, 93 mins, in Danish (EN sub-titles)
An uplifting retelling of the story that saw Denmark become European football champions in 1992 against all the odds.
The story was told from the perspective of the manager, Richard Møller Nielsen (Ulrich Thomsen), who had achieved great success with under-age teams and had been entrusted with the senior team for the qualifications and subsequently the finals held in Sweden, despite being far from the original chose of the Danish football association.
Originally Yugoslavia had won the group but were then prevented from playing in the 8-team finals, with Denmark having just 10 days to prepare. The team, and particularly Brian Laudrup (Cyron Melville), resisted the manager's approach but, slowly but surely, they started to get results. The rest is history. There are a number of sub-plots too, one of which concerns Kim Vilfort (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) whose daughter was hospitalised with leukaemia.
The film does what a lot of Scandinavian, and particularly Danish, film-makers set out to do, which is to base a story around a character with a complex or flawed personality.
The film portrays the manager of the national team, Richard Møller Nielsen, as a technical master and dedicated manager but who lacks the personality to be a leader. However, he changes during the course of the tournament finals and eventually gets Brian Laudrup to perform to his best.
The director also uses a blend of archive footage with that of the film's actors to create a semless integration of match-day action, with the tempo rising as each match is played.
This film was screened during the Nordic film Festival in Luxembourg and is similar in many ways to "Scooting for Socrates" which was screened during the 2015 British & Irish Film Season, featuring the underdogs Northern Ireland and their qualification for, and playing at, the world cup in Mexico in 1986.
