Details on Ole Christian Madsen's Upcoming War Epic

It seems to be the season for Danish directors to try their hands at major epics. Pusher director Nicholas Winding Refn is working away on his upcoming Viking picture and when I met him at the recently concluded Toronto International Film Festival, Nordkraft and Prague director Ole Christian Madsen spilled news that he is currently preparing a major film about the Danish resistance movement during World War Two. More details arrived today via NordicFilmNews.net:

On a DKK 45+ million budget, Madsen and Nimbus Film will revive two World War II heroes in the Danish Resistance. Thure Lindhardt will play one of the leads, and producer Lars Bredo Rahbek expected the remaining cast will be announced in December. The financial packaging of the film, which will shoot from Monday, 5 March in Denmark, the Czech Republic (Prague) and Germany (Berlin’s Babelsberg Studios), is not fully completed. FilmFolket-Loke Havn will handle local distribution.

Penned by Madsen with Lars K Andersen, Flammen og Citronen (which were the code names of Bent Faurschou Hviid and Jørgen Haagen Schmidt) follows the two members of the Holger Danske resistance group who were initially assigned to kill Danish informers, later ordered to liquidate Germans. They never question their commanders until one day as Flammen is told to execute his girlfriend, Ketty, a Stockholm courier. The fight for freedom has entered a grey area where it is increasingly difficult to decide who is with whom.

Citronen was killed on 14 October 1944, in a shoot-out with the German secret police, Gestapo, and German soldiers. He was 33 years old. Aged 23, Flammen committed suicide a few days later (18 October), when he was captured, unarmed, swallowing poison to avoid falling into Gestapo’s hands.

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[photo by Bjarne Hermansen]