Malou Reyman & Frelle Petersen Win Dreyer Award

Directors Malou Reymann (A Perfectly Normal Family) and Frelle Petersen (Uncle) were presented with the prestigious Dreyer Award at Cinemateket on Wednesday in celebration of their outstanding artistic contribution to Danish cinema.

Jurors Eva Novrup Redvall, Johannes Riis and Jakob Buhl Vestergaard said in deliberation of the winners: “Dreyer portrayed in some of his most famous films vulnerable but strong women, very similar to the way both of your films show girls and women in situations where they and the family are under pressure. However, your relationship with Dreyer may first and foremost show in the way you have come up with a distinctive form and style for your stories.”

“Dreyer argues that the soul of the work of art sits in the style. It is through the style that the instructor makes the spectator perceive the material as the instructor views it… We must want something, we must dare something, and we must not skip where the fence is lowest. Malou Reymann and Frelle Petersen, you have both dared and have succeeded in finding your own style that makes us see the characters and the action exactly as you want.”

The Carl Theodor Dreyer Foundation presents the Dreyer Award every year to younger film makers in recognition of outstanding artistic endeavours to mark the distinguished director’s birthday. It is funded by the annual surplus generated by Gaumont’s distribution of his classic 1928 movie La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc.

Previous recipients of the award include Susanne Bier (1992), Lone Scherfig & Per Fly (2001), Niels Arden Oplev (2007), Hlynur Pálmason (2018), Isabella Eklöf (2019) and May el-Toukhy (2020).