00:03
Nikolaj Arcel
I have chosen After the Storm by Caspar David Friedrich. And the reason I have that is because, and this is very classical for a director, this was the most dramatic.

00:14
Nikolaj Arcel
Whenever I go to a museum, I love all kinds of art, but I'm always drawn to the slightly dangerous images of a shipwreck or a mermaid trying to lure sailors off. It's the adventure of it. I was drawn to that because it felt quite riveting.

00:29
Nikolaj Arcel
It's a small boat, it's a fisherman. And you can see that there's been a storm, and he's almost shipwrecked on some rocks. He's all alone in the world and waves are crashing in. It's not like, it's not like you feel he's going to die. But you feel like this is gonna be a tough one to get out of.

00:47
Nikolaj Arcel
And it's just that sort of man against nature thing, which, by the way, also is a theme in my new film, that I gravitate to.

00:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the National Gallery of Denmark and the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who've made a significant mark in the U.S.

01:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Nikolaj Arcel, a Danish director who has a strong connection to Los Angeles and who's currently here promoting his film, The Promised Land. Welcome, Nikolaj.

01:28
Nikolaj Arcel
Thank you.

01:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's nice to have you.

01:30
Nikolaj Arcel
Thank you so much for having me.

01:32
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We're at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. This is a hotel that's very well-known in the film and TV industry, and it hosts many events and is very busy during award seasons. I know you don't have a special relationship to the hotel, but you have a special relationship to the area, and you used to live right down the road from here.

01:53
Nikolaj Arcel
I did. When we were here with my last Danish film, A Royal Affair, when we were doing the Academy work for that, we actually stayed at a house up Doheny, which was Marilyn Monroe's old place. So that was fun. We rented that place for about six months.

02:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Cool. You called Los Angeles home for a while. What is your relationship to the city? When did you live here? Why did you move here? And what attracted you to the city?

02:23
Nikolaj Arcel
The reason I moved here was because A Royal Affair got shortlisted and then nominated for the Academy Award as the best international feature of, I think, 2012 or 2013? The years passed by. That's why I moved here. And I didn't think I was going to stay, but I loved the city so much that I ended up staying almost four years here.

02:47
Nikolaj Arcel
I went back to Denmark quite a lot, because I obviously have family and my parents and everything. But this was my base for about four, four and a half years.

02:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You did a movie here, it's called The Dark Tower. I know that this was not the greatest experience for you. Now that it's been a while and you can put it into perspective, what was it that made it less great?

03:12
Nikolaj Arcel
I think it was a mix of a lot of different things. First of all, I experienced the same kind of story that every single Danish director experiences when they come to LA and try it out, try to make a big sort of Hollywood kind of film, which is that they find their own voice getting quite lost.

03:33
Nikolaj Arcel
We come from the Danish sort of very democratic where everybody speaks, you know, everybody talks to each other about how to solve the problems, but also the director has final cut, final say, and everything. It's purely the director's vision. And so you listen to opinions, but it's your film.

03:51
Nikolaj Arcel
It's very different here, I found, which is that you listen to opinions and you try to say no to stuff, but you can't because it's other people's money. And in the case of The Dark Tower, there were two studios, so I had double the people who had an opinion.

04:07
Nikolaj Arcel
And I think everybody wanted to make a good film, but the thing is, if there are 40 people who are decision makers on a film, it's very hard to make a good film. So that was the main issue that I think I ran into. Also, I was quite, I wasn't prepared for the politics of it. I wasn't prepared that a director here is just as much a politician and has to navigate between different opinions.

04:35
Nikolaj Arcel
I still feel quite warmly about a lot of the people that I worked with on that film. But ultimately, the result, you can almost see that the result is like everybody has a little idea that they wanted in there. And it's not really one person's film. It's not, it doesn't have a clear vision.

04:53
Nikolaj Arcel
It's more like, wouldn't it be cool to do this and that and this other thing? And let's have an action scene here, even though there's no need for it. There was a little bit too much of trying to make a film that would please everybody. And then of course you end up pleasing very few people.

05:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You worked with some of Hollywood's biggest stars in that film, Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba, who, by the way, spoke very highly about you when I spoke to them about working with you. What is it like working with actors like that compared to, for instance, Danish actors? Some people might have the idea that you get starstruck, or maybe the opposite, that there's annoying diva behavior on set. What's it like?

05:36
Nikolaj Arcel
I think I was a bit starstruck in the very first meetings, but quite quickly, you get that over with, and then you're just two creatives working together. I found that Matthew was a great pleasure to work with. He was extremely passionate about just being on set. He wanted to be on set all the time. When we're not doing his scenes, he was calm and sat next to me.

05:58
Nikolaj Arcel
He had a chair next to the director's chair. He wouldn't butt in or say anything to me, but he would just, like, hang out and just for the experience of being on set. And he had a lot of great stories and anecdotes. It was really a pleasure to work with him. He was a very generous person.

06:12
Nikolaj Arcel
And Idris was great. I mean he was a funny guy. He was very down to earth, speaks to everybody on the set and he's a brilliant, charismatic actor. It was certainly not their fault that the movie became mediocre a little bit. I think it was just an amalgam of different things. But it was a pleasure to work with those guys.

06:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is there anything that would surprise us listeners about making a film like this that we don't think about that is—

06:39
Nikolaj Arcel
Like The Dark Tower?

06:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Like a big Hollywood production?

06:41
Nikolaj Arcel
Yeah, I was surprised at how little that big budget can actually get you. I think one of the things, and we'll get back to my new film, I'm sure, which is a big epic movie made for $8 million, and you can get a lot of film for that in Denmark and in Europe. But in coming over here, there's something about the money that gets lost a little bit.

07:03
Nikolaj Arcel
I think we had about $40 million to make The Dark Tower. And for me, it didn't feel like we had a lot of money. It was like every single cent was being counted and every day was like, we can't do this, we can't do that, no, that's too expensive, no more VFX. So I actually was unpleasantly surprised in terms of, I thought, oh, you have $40 million, you can do anything.

07:23
Nikolaj Arcel
But it turned out that a lot of that money is going to things that I didn't quite understand where that money was going. It might be overhead, it might be expensive plane tickets. I don't know, but it's just a different way of working here. Seems to be a little bit of a waste, sometimes, of the budget and the money.

07:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What would you say is the best thing you got out of the experience? And in hindsight, could you have approached it differently?

07:49
Nikolaj Arcel
I could have approached it differently, but only if I had been able to travel back in time. So I couldn't really, right? There's no way to know anything. In any movie you go into, you always think you know what is right and how to do it, and then you find out in the middle of shooting, you find out, oh, wait a minute, I should have done it differently.

08:07
Nikolaj Arcel
And you do that on every movie, and sometimes you luck out. You find, I'm actually doing the right thing. And then on other films, you find out a little too late, or, it should probably have been more like this. But I think that in hindsight, it wasn't a pleasurable experience to do that film, mostly because I didn't feel I had a voice in the film. I wasn't really the leader that I'm supposed to be on the film.

08:31
Nikolaj Arcel
In hindsight, I really learned a lot as a director. I certainly am a stronger director now than I was when I made A Royal Affair, I could feel that making The Promised Land, I had a different kind of muscularity in terms of how we did visuals. I worked very hard on the characters. I think these are some of the most complex characters I've ever helped create in the writing process.

08:56
Nikolaj Arcel
There's a little less fear of just going for it. Whereas some of my earlier films might have been slightly more polished, this is more raw, and I think I got that from working on The Dark Tower. I think I got that from my years in America. The film is pretty brutal at times as well, and I also think that was something I learned, that if you want to tell something that feels true, you can't shy back from the truth of it.

09:20
Nikolaj Arcel
So I did get a lot of it out creatively from working here. And from working with Americans. In general, it wasn't just The Dark Tower. It was also the projects that I was working on, stuff like the Robert Kennedy film, and other things. I just learned a lot from my American collaborators.

09:38
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And that's my next question, because you did work on a script about Robert Kennedy with Matt Damon attached. I know from Matt Damon that he was very excited about this project. What is happening with this, and what attracted you to this part of American history, and how did you as a Dane approach Robert Kennedy differently?

09:59
Nikolaj Arcel
That project is in a weird stage where we talk once a year about it, and have this dream that one day we're going to do this film. But I doubt that it'll ever get made, because there's something about it. We wrote the script. I was hired to do it by Matt and his company.

10:15
Nikolaj Arcel
Basically, we had a couple of meetings. They liked A Royal Affair. They asked, do you have any interest in US politics? I'm a huge US politics buff. So I was like, definitely. And do you like Robert Kennedy? I love Robert Kennedy. It was quite easy. It was an easy meeting. And say, do you want to take a crack at a script? We did. And they loved the script.

10:34
Nikolaj Arcel
It was more about the timing. I think the timing was that just after we wrote the script, there was a new positive movement in the world and in America, which is that films about a white privileged guy trying to help poor people isn't really the film you want to do anymore.

10:56
Nikolaj Arcel
And it was even clear for Matt and I that it was almost like, oh, we're a little bit old fashioned here, like, we're not really telling a story that is for the current world, for the modern world. It's still a great story but I think if we ever do it, it would have to be rewritten quite extensively and now there's so much other stuff going on in US politics.

11:16
Nikolaj Arcel
It's almost like, are we going to drown in the whole Trump of it all? It's a tough time for that film to be made. It would probably end up being like a miniseries, right, on a streaming channel, which would be good, but I don't know if we're ready to make it that.

11:32
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It sounds like working with Matt was a good experience?

11:33
Nikolaj Arcel
Oh, it was amazing. Yeah. He's one of the best. He's the real deal. He's so down to earth and so intelligent and just a nice guy. There was none of that sort of Hollywood feeling with Matt. And his team, by the way, were all great. So yeah.

11:50
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You learned that Hollywood is very competitive and that it's maybe more about the money here than the creative side of filmmaking. How competitive is the Danish film industry?

12:03
Nikolaj Arcel
I don't think I learned that it was more about the money than the creative. I think that people here are extremely creative and very passionate. I think that the thing is that it's the marriage between big money and creative people. And I also think some of the quote-on-quote money people are very creative.

12:19
Nikolaj Arcel
I just think that the fear of not making money is what rules a lot of the films being made. And that fear is dangerous because that always kills creative force. To answer your question about Denmark, it's not like that in Denmark because in Denmark, you don't have that fear because the films don't really need to make that much money.

12:39
Nikolaj Arcel
A lot of it is government funded. At least 30%–35% of it is government funded. Budgets are so much smaller. Relative to Danish budgets, my films are usually bigger than a normal Danish film, but you're not risking millions and millions of dollars. You're risking relatively small amounts of money.

12:56
Nikolaj Arcel
So the focus is 99% on just doing something good and creating a great film. And then whether it makes a lot of money or not is happily not the sort of main thing, which means that there's a lot of creativity and freedom to express yourself.

13:12
Nikolaj Arcel
And I think that's part of the reason why Danish films are really doing quite well overseas and everywhere in the world. For a country of 6 million people, there certainly are a lot of Danish films in the international awareness.

13:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the ways Danish films get made?

13:31
Nikolaj Arcel
I see no disadvantages, honestly. Of course, I'm a Dane and I love working there. But I think one of the greatest things is that we have a little community of filmmakers. And, we're not competitors. It's like, I can invite Thomas Vinterberg or Susanne Bier into my editing room and go, hey, watch a cut of my film.

13:49
Nikolaj Arcel
What do you think? Come, give me some criticism, and we can do that with each other. We can read each other's scripts. There's a great community of creative people who are unafraid to open up themselves and their creative process to other filmmakers. And that always makes you stronger.

14:04
Nikolaj Arcel
And the same goes with your crew. It's a group of friends. It's not really like I'm the boss and you guys are my crew. It's more like we're all friends. We're all trying to make the same thing here. And we're all discussing things, debating things, helping each other out.

14:23
Nikolaj Arcel
It's like Mads always, yeah, he always likes to joke about how in Denmark, an actor can pick up some electrical equipment if we got to hurry, and it really is like that. That's unheard of in America. You don't see a big movie star picking up two boxes of wires and running across the field, but somebody like Mads will do that 'coz in Denmark, we're all in it together.

14:45
Nikolaj Arcel
I can't imagine a better way of making movies. It's that sort of indie way, whether you're doing a big budget or a small budget film in Denmark.

14:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It sounds like maybe you can get Matthew McConaughey or Matt Damon to do it.

14:58
Nikolaj Arcel
I don't know. Yeah, I probably could. I probably could.

15:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are a graduate of the National Film School of Denmark. It is well known for being one of the best of its kind. Tell us why you decided to go there and why this school is apparently so good?

15:14
Nikolaj Arcel
Yeah, I mean, the decision to go there is almost a given if you want to become a filmmaker in Denmark. It's quite different from over here in America, because in Denmark, if you don't go to the National Danish Film School, it's very hard to become a director or a screenwriter.

15:34
Nikolaj Arcel
I mean, you can, it can happen. One or two of the biggest filmmakers in DENMARK have not gone to the school, like Anders Thomas Jensen, Nicolas Winding Refn. But everybody else, basically, went to that school. And so it's just something you need to do.

15:46
Nikolaj Arcel
And then it's very hard to get in. It's a really tough school to get into because they only pick, for instance, six directors every two years, that's it. Six people every two years. And so it's very hard to get in. But if you do get in, it's almost like you already passed the exam and you're graduating even before you start the school.

16:06
Nikolaj Arcel
So that's why I think the school is great because again, there's no pressure. It's not about your graduation. It's about, you got in, you're already a filmmaker, now we are gonna help you become a better filmmaker for the next four years.

16:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are in Los Angeles promoting your first Danish film since A Royal Affair from 2012. It's a film called The Promised Land. We've talked a little about it. It is award season, which culminates in the big show, the Oscars, in March. What was your first experience with promoting your film like this, campaigning for awards when you did it with A Royal Affair? Was it a surprise to you how it all works?

16:50
Nikolaj Arcel
Back when I did A Royal Affair, when we came here? Yeah, absolutely. It was a surprise but a pleasant one. It was almost like an adventure. I had no idea that A Royal Affair was going to get the kind of attention it did. I just made a film that I thought would be a good film to do.

17:05
Nikolaj Arcel
I love the story. And I was very proud of that film, but I had no idea it would be nominated and all those things. And so it was just a very pleasurable experience in that everything was a pleasant surprise. When we got shortlisted, it was like, Oh my God, we got shortlisted. And when we got the nomination, it was a holy cow, we got nominated, and we're one of the favorites to win. And I couldn't believe it.

17:28
Nikolaj Arcel
And so every day was like an adventure. We got invited to all these wonderful sessions with other directors. I got to meet interesting filmmakers from all over the world. I got to hang out with one of my favorite filmmakers, Haneke, who was nominated for Amour, who won that year and rightfully so, because that was a masterpiece.

17:46
Nikolaj Arcel
So that was just a very fun experience and I didn't even think about the competitiveness of it. I never even felt, oh, I hope we win. I was in that wonderful space of just being creatively happy with the film that I did. And I remember actually, when I saw Amour, the one we were at competition with, I was like, I really hope that wins because that's a great performance, and he deserves it after all these years of making wonderful films.

18:11
Nikolaj Arcel
So it was just a very, very positive experience. And it does feel the same this time around with The Promised Land, because it feels similar in that it's just gratifying when you work hard. And this is something that doesn't happen on every film you do.

18:26
Nikolaj Arcel
When you work hard, you do your best, you make a film that you're proud of. It's not always that other people respond the way you think they will. But on this one, it's happened again, and that's just extremely gratifying.

18:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Were you surprised by the whole campaign, how it works, how you — it's almost like a political campaign. Is it different this time around?

18:48
Nikolaj Arcel
I think so. I think so. At least I never managed to figure out the political campaigning of it all. I wasn't trying to win over anybody. I was being shipped around from screening to screening and I just had fun. People came up and said, Oh, it was a great film. And I was very happy.

19:06
Nikolaj Arcel
Like I said, I wasn't in it for the competition. I didn't try to win over people or charm people. I was just basically there and just loving the experience. I was more interested in the voters that came up to me and what they had done because they had usually done something insanely interesting.

19:23
Nikolaj Arcel
And it feels like that again. This year, we had a great screening. People were very happy. Somebody comes up to me, an Academy person, and he says, Oh, I loved your film, and by the way, I did Kramer Vs. Kramer. Oh my God, Kramer Vs. Kramer. And all I want to talk about, of course, is Kramer Vs. Kramer. I don't care about my own film anymore. So that's a nice, fun experience.

19:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
A Royal Affair was nominated for a Golden Globe, which I mention, because I am a voter for the Golden Globe awards, and the biggest American award of them all, the Oscar. What were these experiences like for you? People think that these events are very glamorous, and to some extent, they are. But maybe you have some interesting memories you would like to share with us.

20:07
Nikolaj Arcel
Yeah, I mean, for the Globes, I have some really fond memories of just watching Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who I love and I've always loved. So that was just like, hey, we're going to spend an evening having fun listening to these. And it was a really fun night, I remember.

20:22
Nikolaj Arcel
With the Oscars, I was surprised that the amount of commercial breaks — we were just sitting around and waiting. It wasn't as glamorous as I thought it would be. But on the other hand, I'm not attracted to glamor. I'm not, Oh, I can't wait to go there and put on my fine suit. I'm a little bit the opposite. I'm shy and a little bit introverted.

20:40
Nikolaj Arcel
So I was actually quite okay with the whole thing being a little bit more, okay, now you sit there for 10 minutes and they will be back on, some little breaks where you go up and get some air. And so it was actually fine with me. I wasn't expecting to be dazzled.

20:54
Nikolaj Arcel
What I was dazzled by was the amount of people in the room that I've looked up to my entire life — directors, actors, writers. I was awed to be in their presence that night. And by the way, at some of these other events that we did. I don't think that ever goes away.

21:11
Nikolaj Arcel
I think that no matter how many films I make, I'll always be, I wouldn't say starstruck, but inspired and awed to be able to actually have a little chat with somebody whose films I've loved my entire life. That will always be a great gift, a great bonus to this whole process.

21:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And at the Globes, we try to make the event very intimate and with the table, where you get to sit and hang out with people and it's easy to socialize —

21:40
Nikolaj Arcel
I think I was at a table with Spielberg at the Globes. I was pretty, pretty okay.

21:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah, so I wanted to ask you, did you get to meet and talk to some of these people that you'd looked up to all your life? I know that it's easy to get in touch with them, at least at the Globes.

21:55
Nikolaj Arcel
Yeah, again, like I said, I'm shy. I'm not the kind of person that goes over to somebody and says, Hey, I love your work, let's talk. I'm not that guy. So it was more when we had something specific to talk about or when somebody turned up at one of my screenings and it was natural to talk about, okay, A Royal Affair or in this case, The Promised Land this year.

22:16
Nikolaj Arcel
And at the smaller events again, it's easier when you run into somebody and say, Oh my God, your, that film was great. But at these bigger events, it seems, for me, a little tougher to just walk around — I don't really do that. I think it's a very classic director's thing. I think directors are normally not that great at networking. There's a reason why we're behind the camera, right?

22:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The Promised Land is your first Danish film since 2012. It takes place in a similar period to A Royal Affair, but we experience the period from a different perspective. This time we're not at the royal court, but on the rough Danish heath with people who are trying to climb the social ladder or survive. Why tell another historical story? Why the same period? Are you particularly interested in this period and are you a Danish history buff?

23:10
Nikolaj Arcel
I'm a Danish history buff. I'm a European history buff, I would say, or I actually should say I'm a history buff, period. The 1700s was the time of the Enlightenment in Europe, French Revolution, American Independence War, all of these big life changing, world changing events happened in that period.

23:29
Nikolaj Arcel
Of course, there were other centuries where a lot of other big stuff happened. But this is a little closer to home, in a way. It's not that long ago. I know it's 300 plus years, but it feels like this is a century that created who we are today and how we think, at least how we want to think.

23:46
Nikolaj Arcel
So I just think it's a very interesting time. It wasn't on purpose that I went back to that period. It was because I read a novel by Ida Jessen, who was a great female novelist, Danish, and I already loved her other books. This was a completely new book that she had written.

24:02
Nikolaj Arcel
I was lucky enough to read it just before it got published and I fell in love with the story. I didn't have an inclination. I didn't feel like — It was almost the opposite. I was almost like oh, should I really go back to the 1750s? When I read the novel, I was sold. I was sold on the characters. I was sold on the love story.

24:22
Nikolaj Arcel
Basically, I fell in love with the character of the little girl, who was one of the only colored girls in Scandinavia at the time. And there were just so many things, so many great things about that book and I just loved the characters and that's why I felt, okay, I do have to go back to that time period.

24:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you worked with Anders Thomas Jensen on the script. How was that process like for the two of you? He's also an accomplished filmmaker and director in his own right. And how closely did you work with Ida Jessen?

24:55
Nikolaj Arcel
We didn't work closely with Ida Jessen at all. Me and Anders Thomas have been working together for a couple of years now. We became friends because we both lived in LA at the same time. And we're both screenwriters, we're both directors, so we have that in common. And we started just working together. I'm helping him with his films, you know, Riders of Justice. And he's been helping me with mine. This is probably the first film that we really truly wrote together, that was a true collaboration between us.

25:22
Nikolaj Arcel
And as for Ida Jessen the novelist, when we got the rights to her book, the first thing she said is I don't want anything to do with the script, I trust you guys completely, just show me the finished film. That was her thing, which is nice. Sometimes authors of books can be a little precious about, oh, I want that scene, or you should do this. And she wasn't like that at all. She was very trusting and just open.

25:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You describe a Danish society that seems so far from the current Danish society. What were the main differences between who we were as Danes then, and who we are now? And did you want the Danes to reflect on anything in particular after they have seen your film?

26:04
Nikolaj Arcel
I think, first of all, thematically, the film for me is about a personal character journey. This time it wasn't that much about the politics as it was about the journey of three or four people trying to survive on the heath and creating this family. The film for me is about, will this family make it or won't they make it? That's basically what it's about.

26:28
Nikolaj Arcel
And that's what I felt was poignant and interesting and suspenseful. Will they make it? Will love thrive or will the main character's ambition kill that love? That's what the main gist of it was for me.

26:41
Nikolaj Arcel
But then you have all the other things. You have the feudal society, you have the landowners who have all the power, you have the poor people who have zero power, you have the female characters who are very strong in this film but really have no power until they grab the power for themselves.

26:57
Nikolaj Arcel
There were a lot of themes in it, but for me — and this is probably the first time I've done that, I felt this — the only thing that mattered to me was the inner life and the journey of the characters. That was 90% for me.

27:10
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Mads Mikkelsen is also the lead in The Promised Land. He plays a rather mysterious man named Captain Ludvig Kahlen, who is the illegitimate son of a rich landowner who wants to climb the social ladder and impress the Danish king. Mads Mikkelsen is an international star who can sell tickets. What other reasons did you have to cast him?

27:34
Nikolaj Arcel
There are thousands of reasons. Mads is one of the greatest actors alive, period, in the world, I think. He's capable of almost anything. He's capable of expressing so many emotions. His craft is excellent. And also we're friends. You want to work with your friends.

27:52
Nikolaj Arcel
And after A Royal Affair, we became friends. We had so much fun. I felt, what could be better than to have an extremely talented actor who was so passionate about the work, also very funny to be around, and your friend and a star? Every box is checked with him.

28:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And I should say he played Struensee in A Royal Affair. You like making large scale films, epic films. The Promised Land is expensive for a Danish production. 60 million Danish kroner, which is around $9 million US dollars. So small budget for a US film. But how difficult is it to get a film like that made in Denmark?

28:33
Nikolaj Arcel
It's less so today than it was ten years ago. We made A Royal Affair for about $6 million dollars. This cost about $8 and a half million dollars. I've made a name for myself now, Mads is a name, Anders Thomas is a big writer and director in Denmark. So the team of us coming together made it a little bit easier to finance it this time around.

28:53
Nikolaj Arcel
It wasn't that hard. I mean, A Royal Affair was much harder to finance. That took years and nobody really believed that one could do a big epic historical movie in Danish until we did it. And now since we already did it people believed it more from the get go this time around and they could see that this team probably could do it.

29:11
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's a personal question — how do you think it has changed you, as a human being, and as a filmmaker, that you spent some time in the US? Has it changed your perspective on life, work, family, the way you see life in Denmark, for instance?

29:27
Nikolaj Arcel
I think it changes your perspective whenever you do something that completely upends your life and you experience something new. It does expand your perspective. When I go home and try to explain to Danish people and they ask me, so how is America? What's it like to be there? What are American people like? It's unexplainable.

29:46
Nikolaj Arcel
I can't explain it to them. I always say, it's only one way to really find out, it's to go over there, stay there for at least a year or two, and then you'll find out because it's so complex. It's like, how can you explain a Danish person to an American? It's really hard. They have to come and live there.

30:01
Nikolaj Arcel
So the perspective got broadened. I was living in this Danish bubble for many years, and now I feel that I am far more knowledgeable about this country than I was when I was young and had these preconditioned notions about America that I don't have anymore now.

30:17
Nikolaj Arcel
Now I know how complex and fascinating and sometimes a little bit scary, but always interesting, America and American people are. And I will always now think of this as my second home in a way because I lived here for so long that I will always feel home when I come back here.

30:36
Nikolaj Arcel
So it's been really great in that sense that I have two or maybe even three countries, 'coz I'm half Greek. So I have three countries where I actually feel like I'm at home here when I land in the airport.

30:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What would you think that the Danes get wrong about the US and what do the Americans get wrong about Denmark?

30:55
Nikolaj Arcel
Danish people get wrong about America — they usually think they're all a little bit crass and especially now when there's a lot of scary politics going on and they think everybody's walking around and shooting people in malls. So they don't truly know that America is just as complex as any other place and everybody's different and some people have these kinds of politics and other people have other kinds.

31:20
Nikolaj Arcel
I think one thing that Danish people don't get is the beauty of the sprawling nationalities here. Everybody's from somewhere. Nobody's really just from here. And everybody's an immigrant, and everybody's moved here, and they all have roots somewhere.

31:34
Nikolaj Arcel
That actually makes it quite beautiful to be here, because no matter who you talk to, they always go like, Oh yeah, but my father was Ukrainian, or my mother was from there, and some other country, or we came from Mexico, or something.

31:45
Nikolaj Arcel
It's very international. It's truly the whole world in one nation, which is something very different from Denmark, where almost everybody is just a Scandinavian person. So that's something they don't understand.

31:57
Nikolaj Arcel
And as for what Americans get wrong about Denmark, they think it's this cozy little place with little bakery shops and everybody's just happy. And of course, it's not that way. It's very complex. There are also unhappy people in Denmark trying to survive and all that. So it's a little, yeah.

32:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You said you feel at home here. Would you consider making more movies here, and living in the US again?

32:21
Nikolaj Arcel
I don't think I would live here again, but the only reason for that is that now I'm married and have two little kids, one is three, one is only four months old. And I want them to grow up in Denmark, because that's the way of life I understand. And that's the way of life I want them to have.

32:37
Nikolaj Arcel
Having my kids grow up here would make me feel a little bit alienated towards them. Because then they would become more American, and I would still be this Danish guy, and I wouldn't quite be able to understand their way of thinking. So I think I'm gonna stay in Denmark.

32:52
Nikolaj Arcel
I would certainly do another film here. I don't think I would do another big studio film, because I think I would probably have the same experience as the last time. I'm doing a TV show for Apple, it's one of my next projects. I think that's going to be a lot of fun. It's my own project that I did with Anders Thomas again.

33:08
Nikolaj Arcel
It's called The Monster of Florence. It's a true story set in Italy. So it's European. I would do a smaller budget film here. I would do a more personal film, an indie type film where I retain the final cut, or retain — it's not about are we going to make a hundred million dollars. It's more about are we going to make this film great.

33:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And my final question to you, it's a big question. You are a young man, still, you're in your fifties, that is very young.

33:38
Nikolaj Arcel
Yeah, 51.

33:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What do you still want to achieve in your life? What are your life goals?

33:44
Nikolaj Arcel
Well, see that's what's changed since the last time at least you and I spoke or the last time I was here. Whereas if we had spoken ten years ago, I would have said just make more films and be better at what I'm doing and keep making films until the day I die.

33:59
Nikolaj Arcel
Now, I have two little boys and now my only concern is them. Basically it's about, are they going to be happy? Are they lonely? Are they scared? What's the future gonna be like? So that's all I think about now and it's a very different life for me now, an inner life.

34:14
Nikolaj Arcel
Of course I want to keep making films. I want to keep excelling at making films and I always try to make the next film I do braver or more bold or more interesting than the last. So that I challenge myself, if I can. And I will keep doing that, for sure. But I also just now have kids and I need to also, I really also want to focus on them.

34:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Thank you so much for your time, Nikolaj. It was a pleasure talking to you.

34:43
Nikolaj Arcel
Of course. Thank you.

34:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Nikolaj Arcel chose Caspar David Friedrich's Efter Stormen or After the Storm from 1817 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.