Scandinavia Cannes Docs Showcase Touts Both New and Established Talent

variety.com:

Lise Pedersen Scandinavia is bringing talent old and new to the Cannes Film Market’s Cannes Docs sidebar this year, with a showcase of five feature length films-in-the-making pitched as part of the Scandinavian Showcase on Saturday.“Children of the Lowest Heaven”From Denmark, internationally acclaimed writer-director Birgitte Stærmose Mortensen (“Darling,” “Room 304”), who has been working on mini-series for HBO, Starz and Netflix for the past five years (“Industry” season 2, “The Spanish Princess,” “In From the Cold” and “The English Game”), presented “Children of the Lowest Heaven” (“Ønskeliv”), a hybrid doc set in Kosovo.Inspired by her short “Out of Love” (2009), about a group of children living in poverty in post-war Pristina, it picks up where she left off with the characters, who are now young adults, still fighting to survive in one of Europe’s poorest nations.

It’s about the long-term effects of war, and what it means to live a life in poverty. Poverty is not a moment but a lifelong state of being: the fact is that if you live in that kind of poverty it’s nearly impossible to get out of it.

I wanted to describe it not so much as a crisis to be solved but through that engages you to feel how that must be,” she told Variety.Described as a collective performance piece somewhere between documentary, fiction and a stage play, the film features highly staged, dramatic scenes re-enacted by the protagonists or actors based on interviews with them about their daily life.A co-production between Copenhagen-based Magic Hour Films (“Burma V.J.,” “Into Eternity”), Kabineti in Kosovo, Vilda Bomben in Sweden, and Oslo Pictures in Norway, “Children of the Lowest Heaven” is expected to be released early 2023.“Leaving Jesus”Leavi.