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Danish film spotlights piracy off East Africa Wed Sep 19, 2012 10:42am EDT * “A Hijacking” premiers in Denmark this week * Low-budget film spotlights huge world problem * Action switches between ship and negotiating room * Filmed aboard a vessel in the Indian Ocean By John Acher COPENHAGEN, Sept 19 (Reuters) - A new Danish film made on a shoestring budget with a partly amateur cast confronts the global scourge of piracy on the high seas through a psychological drama about negotiations to free a vessel and crew seized by Somali marauders. “A Hijacking” (“Kapringen” in Danish), directed by Tobias Lindholm, opens at cinemas in Denmark on Thursday after its world premiere in Venice at the beginning of this… Read More →

TIFF 2012 Review: A HIJACKING Is A Gritty Anti-Thriller Todd Brown, Founder and Editor The crew of the freighter MV Rozen are in trouble. En route to Mumbai to take on cargo and fresh crew the cargo vessel has been boarded by Somali pirates, seized by a dangerous and unpredictable armed gang who demand millions from the Rozen’s owners to secure the safe release of ship and crew. The process will stretch over months, the lives of the crew hanging in a tenuous balance throughout while the CEO of their company negotiates for their safe release back home. Though A Hijacking marks the solo directing debut of Tobias Lindholm the young writer-director is already regarded as one of the brightest young talents… Read More →

Toronto: WME Signs ‘A Hijacking’ Helmer Tobias Lindholm By MIKE FLEMING | Tuesday September 11, 2012 @ 7:22pm EDTTags: A Hijacking, Tobias Lindholm, Toronto Film Festival, WME EXCLUSIVE: WME has signed Tobias Lindholm, whose drama A Hijacking received strong reviews out of Venice and before debuting at a press and industry screening yesterday. Lindholm wrote the script and directed a film that has a stylistic resemblance to United 93. U.S. distribution is being handled by Nordisk. Lindholm co-wrote and created Denmark’s top rated TV show, Borgen, and he co-wrote Thomas Vinterberg’s latest film The Hunt. He was chased by all the agencies.

Toronto Film Fest: Robert Redford, Will Smith, Soho House and Somali Pirates Published: September 10, 2012 @ 7:40 am By Sharon Waxman Follow @sharonwaxman The Toronto International Film Festival chugs along with more film gems and movie stars than it has a right to. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith showed their glitter on Sunday at an event for an Angela Davis documentary they produced a day after Johnny Depp showed up for his pal, Damien Echols, out of prison after 18 wrongful years. Paul Haggis (pictured with me) hung out at Soho House with Trudie Styler – where Madonna had a reservation — and implored the glitterati to attend his Haiti fundraiser. (He’ll shortly go back to Rome, where he’s shooting a love… Read More →

Tobias Lindholm, A Hijacking 10 September, 2012 | By Mike Goodridge The director follows up his acclaimed prison drama R with the powerful modern pirates story A Hijacking.   A Hijacking, which played in Orizzonti in Venice last week and is screening in CWC at TIFF starting today, is the first solo directing effort of Tobias Lindholm who co-directed the powerful prison drama R in 2010 with Michael Noer. In A Hijacking, R star Pilou Asbaek plays the cook on a Danish freighter captured and held for ransom by Somali pirates, while Soren Malling plays the head of the shipping company back in Denmark who negotiates with the pirates. The film is shot in a stark, ultra-realistic style, and Lindholm says he cultivates a form of storytelling… Read More →

Venice 2012: Grand Theft Auteur? Sorting the Kubrick From the Chaos at the 2012 Venice Film Festival BY NEIL YOUNG SEPTEMBER 9, 2012 12:11 PM … Even outside the competition I saw only two movies I’d consider Lion-worthy, both of them in the Orizzonti section: Tobias Lindholm’s “A Hijacking” (Kapringen) - covered in my first dispatch, and Alexey Balabanov’s “Me Too” (Ja Tozhe Hochu). …

Venice Wrap: Our 5 Favorite Films Of The Festival, Plus Our Complete Coverage NEWS BY OLIVER LYTTELTON SEPTEMBER 7, 2012 4:10 PM The Venice Film Festival is done for another year. Actually, that’s far from true: the festival doesn’t wrap up til tomorrow, when top gong Golden Lion, and other prizes, will be awarded. And since we departed on Wednesday, a few more high-profile films have been unveiled, including Brillante Mendoza‘s “Thy Womb” (word on which is fairly middling), Robert Redford‘s ”The Company You Keep” (which we hear is the actor/director’s best since “Quiz Show,” and Brian DePalma‘s “Passion” (thanks to Jamie Dunn for reviewing that for us on the Lido). Although we can’t say we’ve had much to compare it to, we’ve found the last two years in… Read More →

Tobias Lindholm, A Hijacking 10 September, 2012 | By Mike Goodridge The director follows up his acclaimed prison drama R with the powerful modern pirates story A Hijacking.   A Hijacking, which played in Orizzonti in Venice last week and is screening in CWC at TIFF starting today, is the first solo directing effort of Tobias Lindholm who co-directed the powerful prison drama R in 2010 with Michael Noer. In A Hijacking, R star Pilou Asbaek plays the cook on a Danish freighter captured and held for ransom by Somali pirates, while Soren Malling plays the head of the shipping company back in Denmark who negotiates with the pirates. The film is shot in a stark, ultra-realistic style, and Lindholm says he cultivates a form of storytelling… Read More →

Venice Film Festival 2012: ‘A Hijacking’ (‘Kapringen’) review ★★★★☆ This year’s 69th Venice Film Festival opened with Bait 3D (2012), which dealt with the perils of entering shark-infested water. We return to the deep with the equally dangerous and considerably scarier human sharks of the Indian Ocean, in Danish director Tobias Lindholm’s superb A Hijacking (Kapringen, 2012). The film opens with cheery chef Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk) aboard the cargo ship Rozen, bound for Mumbai from where he aims to head home to his beloved wife and young daughter. With just days to go before reaching port, Mikkel jokes around with his international crew mates, headed up by its Ozzie captain (Keith Pearson). However, when the call comes in that the Rozen has been hijacked… Read More →

A Hijacking 5 September, 2012 | By Mark Adams, chief film critic Dir/scr: Tobias Lindholm. Denmark. 2012. 103mins A tense and intricately shot drama, writer/director Tobias Lindholm’s solo debut feature is a powerful and intensely watchable film as it tackles the high-pressure negotiations over a hijacked ship, dwelling not just on those hijacked but also the team back at home trying to secure their release. The film deftly balances the twin locations of the stifling often-claustrophobic ship alongside the plus Danish offices of the shipping company. The film, which screened in the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival, is a masterful exercise in building the tension, never resorting to quick dramatic tricks and keeping the tone appropriately serious as the clock… Read More →

A Hijacking: A surge of adrenaline by Stefan Dobroiu 04/09/2012 - Written and directed by Tobias Lindholm, A Hijacking [trailer] explores a topic that has every chance to become popular with screenwriters and directors - the hijackings by Somali pirates. With Tom Hanks currently in post-production with Captain Philips, Lindholm has the advantage of releasing the first film based on a fictional, but very credible, hijacking in international waters. A Hijacking is everything you would expect from a film with such a dramatic theme - drama and tension, the performances are excellent and, just when you think the waters are calming for the cargo ship MV Rozen, there comes the ‘tsunami’. It’s not hard at all to greatly enjoy Lindholm’s screenplay, which is governed by the most fierce realism in… Read More →

Venice Review: ‘A Hijacking’ Is A Detailed, Gripping & Powerful High-Seas Hostage Tale REVIEWS BY OLIVER LYTTELTON SEPTEMBER 4, 2012 2:18 PM   As exciting as it can be to be part of the audience at the first public screening of an eagerly anticipated film – the newPaul Thomas Anderson or Terrence Malick, the new Rian Johnson or David O. Russell – perhaps the purest pleasure that can be found at a film festival is that of discovery. Picking something semi-randomly from the program, with no A-listers, and no internationally-renowned filmmaker at the helm, and walking out a couple of hours later feeling that you’ve uncovered a gem, and have been the first to find a director who could be a major talent to watch. That’s the… Read More →

By GUY LODGE A Nordisk Film Production presentation, in association with the Danish Film Institute, DR, Nordisk Film & TV Fund. Produced by Tomas Radoor, Rene Ezra. Executive producers, Henrik Zein, Lena Haugaard, Thomas Heinesen. Directed, written by Tobias Lindholm. With: Soren Malling, Pilou Asbaek, Gary Skjoldmose Porter, Abdihakin Asgar, Dar Salim, Ronald Moller, Linda Laursen, Amalie Alstrup, Amalie Vulff Andersen, Keith Pearson, Allan Arnby, Bettin Schjerlund. (Danish, English, Somali dialogue) Hostage thrillers are all-too-often shrill affairs, with clock-watching screenwriters wringing maximum melodrama from spiraling disorder. Not so Tobias Lindholm’s superb “A Hijacking,” which actually grows more chillingly subdued as its nightmare scenario unfolds. A fictional but sweatily plausible account of a Danish cargo ship ambushed by Somali pirates in the… Read More →

Venice 2012: Searching For The Golden Lion In The Festival’s First Half BY NEIL YOUNG SEPTEMBER 3, 2012 12:33 PM … Of the fifteen features I’ve seen so far, the only one I could unhesitatingly recommend is Toronto-bound “A Hijacking” (Kapringen) from Denmark’s writer-director du jour Tobias Lindholm - whose credits include BAFTA-winning political TV series “Borgen” and Thomas Vinterberg’s Cannes-awarded “The Hunt.” Lindholm collaborated with Michael Noer on 2010′s genuinely harrowing and narratively audacious prison drama “R” (which I like to describe as “‘A Prophet’ for grown-ups”) but goes it alone here, switching between a pirate-infested cargo ship in the Indian Ocean and its owners’ head office back in Copenhagen as negotiations drag on for days, weeks and months. A… Read More →

A Hijacking: Venice review 9:11 AM PDT 9/3/2012 by Neil Young Søren Malling and Pilou Asbæk star in Tobias Lindholm’s Danish drama about negotiations over a high-seas hostage situation. One of the more unheralded standouts at this year’s Venice, Denmark’s A Hijacking (Kapringen) is a tensely economical study of leadership, teamwork and negotiation in high-pressure crisis situations. Though the grimly serious tone and talk-heavy, action-light approach might perhaps render writer-director Tobias Lindholm‘s solo debut a tricky distribution sell overseas, it could yet ride the profitable, ongoing wave of adult-oriented Scandinavian fare’s international popularity. Small-screen prospects are particularly bright, and while the tight focus here pays claustrophic dividends, it’s easy to imagine this 103-minute version providing the basis for a multi-part miniseries. Premiering in… Read More →

ZIMBIO “A Hijacking” Photocall - The 69th Venice Film Festival Director Tobias Lindholm attends the “A Hijacking” Photocall during the 69th Venice Film Festival at the Palazzo del Casino on September 3, 2012 in Venice, Italy. (September 2, 2012 - Source: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images Europe)

tiff.festival’12 Tensions are high after a Danish freighter is captured and held for ransom by Somali pirates, leading to weeks of high-stakes negotiations — and an escalating potential for explosive violence — in Tobias Lindholm’s grittily authentic and suspenseful thriller. PROGRAMMER’S NOTE A few days out of harbour in the Indian Ocean, the Danish freighter MV Rozen is captured by Somali pirates, who demand millions in ransom for the return of the ship and its crew. The head of the shipping company, Peter Ludvigsen (Søren Malling), immediately hires a professional negotiator to work with him-then disregards the expert’s advice and insists on dealing with the pirates himself. As the days and weeks drag on with no end in sight, it’s clear that… Read More →

Lindholm reunites with R star for A Hijacking 13 February, 2012 | By Mike Goodridge Danish director Tobias Lindholm and actor Pilou Asbaek, who first collaborated on hard-hitting prison drama R in 2010, reunite for Lindholm’s new movie A Hijacking, which is being readied for completion by Cannes. Lindholm, who co-directed R with documentary film-maker Michael Noer, goes solo on A Hijacking which adopts the same uber-realistic style in telling the fictional story of a Danish cargo ship captured by Somali pirates. Asbaek plays one of the seven crew members who is held hostage, while Soren Malling plays the CEO of the shipping company back in Denmark who is involved in the negotiations to free the men while trying to pay the… Read More →

TENSE FIRST TRAILER FOR TOBIAS LINDHOLM’S VENICE SELECTED A HIJACKING (KAPRINGEN) by Todd Brown, August 3, 2012 9:17 AM Ever since Tobias Lindholm first appeared on the international scene as co-director of prison drama R it was clear that he had the potential to lead a new generation of talent out of Denmark. Though R suffered somewhat from being released in the same year as Jacques Audiard’s similarly themed Oscar winner A Prophet it was clear that Lindholm was an uncommon talent and anticipation has run high for his sophomore feature - his first directing solo - A Hijacking (Kapringen). And considering that the film has just been announced as a World Premiere in Venice it would appear that anticipation was well founded. In the Indian Ocean a cargo ship… Read More →

Preview Somali Pirate Thriller ‘A Hijacking’ (Takes Tragic Global Economic Disparities Into Consideration) BY TAMBAY A. OBENSON AUGUST 15, 2012 12:24 PM “A Hijacking” The Somali pirate movie bomb-rush I expected to come over the last couple of years never did quite materialize, despite the few related projects that were announced. Here’s one that we’re just now learning about, and that I’d say, despite not seeming to tell the story strictly from the Somalian POV, actually looks like it could be, dare I say, comprehensive, fair and balanced in the overall story it seeks to tell. Although I certainly haven’t seen it yet, so I’m going solely on what I’ve read about it. From Danish filmmaker Tobias Lindholm comes A Hijacking. Its synopsis reads: Tensions are high… Read More →