Portrait of The Girl with the Needle, by Magnus Von Horn

THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE
Following Efterskalv ((The Here After), screened as a preview at the Directors’ Fortnight in 2015, and then Sweat, in the Official Selection of the 2020 Festival de Cannes, the Swedish director Magnus Von Horn is back at Cannes with Pigen Med Nålen (The Girl with the Needle), a new feature film, this time in Danish. In the running for the Palme d’or, the Swedish director is experimenting with a new artistic approach, a history film.

Inspired by a true story, that of the most controversial murder in the history of Denmark, and a real national trauma, the film tells the story of Karoline, a young worker struggling for survival in 1918 Copenhagen. When she becomes pregnant, she meets Dagmar, a woman who runs a clandestine adoption agency. Karoline accepts a job as a wet-nurse alongside her.

With a Danish cast made up of Vic Carmen Sonne (Godland) and Trine Dyrholm (Festen (The Celebration)), the director is continuing to make films without borders, after a first film in Swedish and a second in Polish. His first historical film and his first in black and white, The Girl with the Needle confirms Magnus Von Horn’s eclecticism, as he succeeds in navigating between a teenage drama, a sensational thriller and a story of female apprenticeship.

“With this film, I wanted to explore the possibility of being good in Hell.”
– Magnus Von Horn

For this film, the director borrowed a part of his team from Paweł Pawlikowski. In the credits, we can thus see the name of Małgorzata Fudala,the costume designer for Cold War, and on the screen we can recognise the sublime black and white of Michał Dymek (Cold War, EO).). A blend of Pawlikowski, Östlund and Vinterberg, Magnus Von Horn moves from one country to another, each time plunging us into a different language, culture, setting and epoch. And it’s a real cinematic evolution we are privileged to be witnessing, with pleasure and curiosity.