Director Thomas Vinterberg with Mads Mikkelsen on location. Right: Down the hatch! Middle-aged teacher Martin (Mikkelsen) gets the party started in style.
THOMAS VINTERBERG HAS been out drinking. Not too much, but he had a good time the night before he speaks to Empire, at Copenhagen’s Parken Stadium, watching Denmark versus Scotland. “Had a couple of pints. We won,” he smiles. “A difficult night to be a Scottish player. I think there were about 20 Scottish people in a crowd of 40,000.”
He likes a drink, here and there. Another Round, his hilarious and horrifying exploration of alcohol, had been brewing for years until he finally worked out what he wanted it to be. And it changed even more drastically a few days into shooting after, tragically, his daughter was killed in a car crash. From there, the film about middle-aged schoolteacher Martin (Mads Mikkelsen) having a midlife crisis became about embracing life itself.
Vinterberg has enjoyed a prolific 25 years as a feature-film director. Highlights include co-inventing the Dogme movement with Lars Von Trier — which kicked off with Vinterberg ’s dark drama Festen (1998), about a man who publicly accuses his father of having molested him — and 2012’s The Hunt, starring Mikkelsen as a man falsely accused of similar abuse. But Another Round is his biggest success, a box-office smash in Denmark that then won the Oscar for Best International Feature. At home in Denmark, Vinterberg looks back on his emotional journey with a tremendous film.
The film resonated with me deeply, taking me back to great nights I’ve had, and also the not-so-great nights. I imagine you’ve had a range of responses from people.