Danish cinema is having a moment. The last two years have seen the release of award-winning films like Another Round, Riders of Justice, Flee and The Guilty. Wild Men co-writer and director Thomas Deneskov credits the Danish Film Institute and public support: “The funding system allows us to really play, and not worry about making a commercial success. There’s a lot of freedom in that. […] We’re doing most of our films on taxpayer money.”
Deneskov is an autodidact who debuted in 2013 with a short film, Ud, Spring over, ind, about a father-son confrontation and bonding experience that plays out in the woods (online with subtitles on youtube). His first full-length film, The Elite (2015), features young creative types who retreat to a rural commune to stave off the inevitability of the passing years. In Wild Men, a middle-aged, suburban family man escapes to the Norwegian mountains to play out his Viking fantasies, hunt, forage, and attempt to inject new meaning into his life.
Deneskov is particularly interested in “how men react to crisis. […] How we raise boys, not encouraging them to talk about their feelings, telling them to ‘be a man’. They become really bad at communicating, but at some point, life is going to hit you. […] These men, they drink more, and they kill themselves more. They are so lonely.” As well as the Coen brothers’ Fargo, he cites Deliverance, the first Rambo film, First Blood, and Into the Wild as conscious influences on the film.
“a deliciously deadpan Scandinavian farce about the crisis in masculinity, skewering poseurs, shortcut-taking criminals and lazy, incompetent cops in a slow-walking pursuit thriller that really isn’t about the thrills” Roger Moore, rogersmovienation.com
“… it’s as if Daneskov strikes for a central mood, then lets each element wander a little away from it: not far enough to be disruptive, but never quite cohesive. Like the misguided men it follows, its charm is in its disorder.” Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle
Audience ‘Best Film’ award: Edera Film Festival 2022: ‘New Visions’ award: Reykjavik International Film Festival 2021
