REGARDING LONE
A wonderful film
In his first feature film Franz Ernst has been able to make persons and surroundings come alive with amazing certainty. Not one single professional actor appears in the film, and not one single line was written. In this way the film is another triumph for the semi documentary method that is based on the spontaneous performances of the actors and their ability to expose their personality in front of the camera. It is not enough to say that Franz Ernst controls this method – he is using it in such a way that you feel it like the only convenient way in the given context.
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In all it is very difficult to find praise enough on Pernille Kløvedal’s personification of Lone. What she gives is not a performance – she just is alive in the film and can as little be separated from the person she is representing as Jean Pierre Léaud can be separated from the boy Antoine in Truffaut’s Les quatre cents coups.
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Regarding Lone is a wonderful film, an event on the Danish film scene. It deserves to be running all summer long in Carlton – and all fall too.
MORTEN PIIL, INFORMATION
Without one false note
Several film critics noted that Regarding Lone is possibly the most considerable film made on Danish soil. In the introduction to the very short synopsis the director/writer couple describe their intentions with the film that they succeeded to release to perfection.
ERIK NØRGAARD, LEVENDE BILLEDER I DANMARK
LIFE IS A DREAM
Different experiences
It would not be correct to say that Franz Ernst’s new film is about mental illness. What makes it the most fascinating Danish documentary I ever saw is exactly that it never uses the concept of illness as its starting point, but instead of that without any prejudice tries to identify with mental conditions that are normally named psychotic.
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Life Is a Dream is an indispensable document in the debate on treatment of people that experience the world in a different way than most people.
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Its documentation makes it impossible to reject, and its attentiveness to a strange world full of experiences, poetry, mystic and melancholy makes it a work of art.
MORTEN PIIL, INFORMATION
SUPER TANKER
Another masterpiece from one of the great ones in newer Danish film
Franz Ernst’s documentary about the super tanker Vespasian is another main work from one of the really great ones in newer Danish film. Not very much is being said in the film, which in return has an unbelievable thoroughly prepared, thoroughly considered, compact visual expression.
ERIK THYGESEN, POLITIKEN
348 metres long and 22 millimetres thick
Masterly Danish film about a super tanker
It’s a tremendously exciting material Franz Ernst has been given for this film. But it’s especially a fruitful form he has found to give it structure: the thriller. Super Tanker is an aesthetic film, but it uses its sophisticated and artistic effects logically and relevant.
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Super tanker is an outstanding documentary about ecologic gambling. But it’s also an expression of Ernst’s original visual sense and sense of artistic structure. Double surprizing shortly after he has underlined his position as the realistic director of actors par excellence with the TV drama Interrupted Meeting.
ANDERS BODELSEN, POLITIKEN
THE WIDE WORLD
From near to far away
Poetic philosophic rush in Franz Ernst’s universe
Franz Ernst’s film is of a kind that is impossible to turn a producer on at the stage of a script. But nevertheless when it is realized it is a born classic that will be referred to again and again for its striking personal expression.
NINA DAVIDSEN, INFORMATION
BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
Astrology for sceptics
Convincing film about the potential of astrology – in the right hands
In these flashbacks Ernst proves to be a rare creator of atmosphere.
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Ernst (and Bruus) create the religious endeavours of the character with pictures of nature of almost pantheistic beauty that make you hungry for a feature film from the same artistic temperament. But till then Between Heaven and Earth is a provoking and fascinating documentation.
NINA DAVIDSEN, INFORMATION
Common sense challenged
Fascinating female biography in moving Danish film on astrology
Franz Ernst’s fascinating and moving short film is about three astrologers’ mapping of the life of 44 years old Helle Galal – put in context with her own report.
BETTINA HELTBERG, POLITIKEN
INTERRUPTED MEETING
On the edge
The acting was at an extraordinarily high level with an impressing homogenous quality. Franz Ernst has directed with exquisite sensitivity, now and then dimmed to an almost soundless level, and with a pitch for undertones that reached the minor parts too.
NIELS BARFOED, POLITIKEN
MAN AGAINST HORSE
How to force a wild horse to the ground
Franz Ernst’s distinguished documentary “Man Against Horse” is pure poetry.
With inspiration from photographer Tine Harden’s photos Franz Ernst has chosen to describe a 600 year old ritual in a 25 minutes long film with only a few introducing texts, and without any narration or dialogue.
That’s a clever decision. Thanks to Klaus Risager’s secretively simmering music and the exquisite work of Swedish cinematographer Dan Holmberg “Man Against Horse” has become a piece of pure poetry – full of movement and drama, but first and last a sensual poetic description of an intriguing practice.
It’s good to see that with “Man Against Horse” he is still able to tell a fascinating and enchanting story in motion pictures.
EBBE IVERSEN, BERLINGSKE TIDENDE