Tobias Lindholm: the hunt for the best writer

He was one of the driving forces behind Borgen, the TV series about Danish politics that became a huge international hit. His second directorial effort, the hostage drama A Hijacking, won him high praise in Venice. And it was thanks to his screenplays for Submarino and The Hunt that Festen director Thomas Vinterberg got back on track: Tobias Lindholm.

The 2012 Cannes Festival gave its best actor award to Mads Mikkelsen for his performance in Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt (Jagten), in which he plays a kindergarten teacher who is rejected (and worse) by the community after an unfortunate allegation of child abuse. The film’s powerful screenplay was by the Dane Tobias Lindholm. “Early on, Thomas [Vinterberg] and I agreed that we would tell the story of an innocent man who becomes the victim of a witch hunt. But what is there that is so awful that the whole community will turn against you?
Then I remembered how powerfully the paranoia of parenthood had affected me when I became a father. The fear that something might happen to your child, the fear of being inadequate, can lead to completely irrational behaviour. The only thing that could drive me to the extent of wanting to kill someone, is harm caused to my children. I could kill my own brother.”

Civilisation is just a thin veneer?
Tobias Lindholm: Danes have the idea that they are the happiest people in the world. Every year the papers publish some report or other that confirms us in that idea and then we pat ourselves on the back. But it doesn’t take much to make us all behave in a much more uncivilised way than you would imagine possible. One little crack is enough. The Hunt is about the loss of innocence, not about child abuse.

Just try and keep a cool head when there are children involved.
Lindholm: According to a Danish saying, the truth comes out of the mouths of children. We can’t imagine that children would lie about something so terrible. But they’re capable of lying about anything. It’s just that we are so afraid that we won’t hear them when they are in need that we react strongly to the slightest thing.
In Denmark mittens attached to each other are forbidden, for fear children might strangle themselves with them. They have to wear helmets for all kinds of things. You’re given out to if your two-and-a-half-year-old goes up the stairs on his or her own. Even though I know that that’s intolerable, I too want to protect my sons.

If I can tease you for a moment: what’s left of The Hunt if you take away Mads Mikkelsen’s gripping performance?
Lindholm: Lots of scenes didn’t make it into the film because they were superfluous, because Mads acted so brilliantly that further explanations were not needed. He is a wizard. But the editors, too, make my work look so much better. A screenplay is just a pile of paper, a tool.

Danish cinema has had an excellent reputation for a long time now. And now TV series like The Killing and Borgen are conquering the world too. How do you explain that?
Lindholm: It is amazing how well Borgen is doing abroad. The idea that we can captivate people all over the world with something as local as Danish politics is hugely reassuring for me. Tell a good story and you’re on the right track. The point is that we don’t measure ourselves against the other Danish series; in terms of plot and screenplay we measure ourselves against the best American TV series.

(Photo Tobias Lindholm © Tania Volobueva)

Jagten (The Hunt) ●●●
DK, 2012, dir.: Thomas Vinterberg, act.: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, 111 min.