Martyrs in the box

Marie Grahtø Sørensen’s cinema is alive, aggressive and doesn’t hold back: enjoy it responsibly.

In 2017, Marie Grahtø Sørensen is among the fifteen names selected for the Cinéfondation Atelier, a forum for promising directors with a project to develop: at last, her Teenage Jesus will become a feature film. We were following Marie before it was cool, pretty much since her 2012 short film Daimi charmed and moved and disturbed us with its story of a girl locked inside her house, playing with a piglet whilst her mother lay dead in the tub. It was followed by some equally notable works: YOLO, an incursion into

Sapphic vampirism, a more humane, less cunning version of Harmony Korine; and Teenland, a very ambitious short on a correctional institute for unruly, psychic teens that was also the basis for Teenage Jesus.
Some things stood out to us from the very beginning: her love for the grotesque and her very personal take on it, her ability to tell stories where others would have settled for her neon visual talent alone. Others only became apparent when compiling this programme: three very

different stories, and yet, three claustrophobic coming of age ones; three sealed places – a flat where to hide, a school after classes are over, an institution under surveillance – that lead the protagonists towards a greater self-awareness, or at least a better awareness of the brutality that surrounds them; three boxed-in young martyrs, case studies of a fascination we sincerely hope won’t languish. Marie Grahtø Sørensen’s cinema is alive, aggressive and doesn’t hold back: enjoy it responsibly.

DAIMI

Denmark / 2012 / 19’ / Fiction
Cast: Bebiane Ivalo Kreutzmann

YOLO

Denmark / 2013 / 22’ / Fiction
Cast: Julie Brochorst Andersen, Frederikke Dahl Hansen, Stephania Potalivo

TEENLAND

Denmark / 2014 / 30’ / Fiction
Cast: Victoria Carmen Sonne, Frederikke Dahl Hansen, Sonja Richter, Bebiane Ivalo Kreutzmann, Sonia Maria Suhl