The best Bodil Jørgensen’s drama movies

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.

North Carolina mountains at the end of the 1920s – George and Serena Pemberton, love-struck newly-weds, begin to build a timber empire. Serena soon proves herself to be equal to any man: overseeing loggers, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. With power and influence now in their hands, the Pembertons refuse to let anyone stand in the way of their inflated love and ambitions. However, once Serena discovers George’s hidden past and faces an unchangeable fate of her own, the Pemberton’s passionate marriage begins to unravel leading toward a dramatic reckoning.

Men & Chicken is a black comedy about two outcast brothers, who by getting to know their unknown family also discover a horrible truth about themselves and their relatives.

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.

Detectives and best friends Andreas and Simon lead vastly different lives; Andreas has settled down with his beautiful wife and son; while Simon, recently divorced, spends most of his waking hours getting drunk at the local strip club. But all that changes when the two of them are called out to a domestic dispute between a junkie couple, caught in a vicious cycle of violence and drugs. It all looks very routine – until Andreas finds the couple's infant son, crying in a closet. The usually collected policeman finds himself confronted with his own powerlessness and is shaken to his core. As Andreas slowly loses his grip on justice, it suddenly becomes up to the unruly Simon to restore the balance between right and wrong.

Romantic comedy from Academy Award winner Susanne Bier (Brothers, In a Better World), about two very different families brought together for a wedding in a beautiful old Italian villa.

On the surface Henrik and Nina Christofferson are an ordinary family living happily. But they have a problem. Their daughter, Stine, a difficult 14 year old, has a habit of telling lies in class. When Stine accuses her father of sexual abuse, and is believed by seemingly eager social workers, their family is thrust into crisis. Could Henrik have done it? And when Stine prepares to return home, the ugly side of family life is exposed.

Robert Hansen, 34, a young police officer from Copenhagen, is transferred against his will to the small town of Skarrild in Southern Jutland as a substitute Marshall. The transfer is Robert’s chance to start over. Whether he is allowed to return to his job in Copenhagen, all depends on how well he performs in this frontier town.

Karlskov is a self made, successful owner of a large electronics factory, has a wife and five children. They live the good, privileged upper-class life on Strandvejen north of Copenhagen when the Nazis occupy Denmark in April 1940. Karl struggles to continue production at the factory, but to protect his family and employees he reluctantly begins to produce for the German market. It brings him into a controversial collaboration with the occupying power and causes painful breaks in the family.

The true story of the Fiil's a family of innkeepers who during Nazi-Germany's occupation of Denmark took up arms against the German occupiers. But in the fight for freedom, some must die so that others may live.

A man convicted in his teens for killing a child is released on parole. He finds work as a church organist and develops a rewarding relationship with a priest and her young son. However, his caring for the boy catches the attention of his old victim's mother, bringing to the surface her bad memories and unanswered questions. This draws them both into troubled waters, having to learn when to hold on and when to let go.

A young man spurs romance and helps his friend and himself go through the struggles of their ordinary life in Denmark.

Now in his fifties, Vagn leads a solitary life and plays football with a group of similarly aged men, some even older. After being left behind at a petrol station by his teammates on their way to a match in Sweden, he encounters a young habitual offender and together they set off in hot pursuit of Vagn's buddies. A Nordic road movie taking in a whole series of comic, serious and, above all, well-written scenarios.

'Collision' centres on a married couple, Leo and Olivia. As they are facing a crisis in their marriage, their nine-year-old daughter, Liv, becomes a messenger between her mother and father. The film explores the break-up of a family and the decisions parents make in trying to find meaning and hope when everything is falling apart

The film is a comedy drama about a young woman, Laura, who has distanced herself from her family in the country to settle in Copenhagen as an author and live the artistic bohemian life she has always dreamed of. When she, with much reluctance, goes back home for her brother’s wedding, she realises that he is about to marry her childhood enemy, Catrine. At the same time, Laura finds out that Catrine has in fact taken over her place in the family – and what if Laura wants it back … A film about how we, no matter how hard we try, cannot escape from our past, nor from our roots.

Follows the lives of four longing souls. Ingeborg who feels unattractive and young Jonas who is so attractive that he can literally sell some of what he's got. Anna, a young beautiful woman with a physical disability, and Anders, a tender man with a psychological disability. Four people yearning for love, four people, each hoping for a better tomorrow.

Erik Nietzsche is an intelligent but in many ways inexperienced shy young man who is convinced that he wants to be a film director. In the late 1970s, Erik is accepted by the Danish National Film School where he enters a world of angry and unhelpful tutors, weird fellow students and unwritten rules. In this both exhilarating and angst-provoking period for him, Erik feels increasingly like a foreigner in the film industry. Frequently, he is merely an observer of the absurdities that surround him. He encounters trade union disputes, falls in love and experiences self-assured empowered women who refuse to make a commitment. The film is a drama full of comedy - a sharp portrait of a conceited but entertaining world of film which we suspect our dogged young director will eventually conquer with his vision.

The story of Juliane, a young woman who learns how to take her fate in her own hands and to trust nobody but herself. The plot is set in the Copenhagen tenements of the 1880s. Juliane is trapped in an unhappy marriage to a man who suffers extended periods of insanity. They have two children. She struggles to improve her social status, however, striving to attain the level of her two elder sisters is not easy. The great upheaval comes when she meets Otto, a smith, younger than Juliane, and in many ways her opposite. He is an ardent socialist, whereas she believes in herself. It is love at first sight when they meet and waltz on the pavement, but their passion really bursts into flame as time goes by. At last Juliane has found a man as strong-willed as she is.