I'm a filmmaker; I want to make films. I don't want to sit in a hotel room waiting to make films, and I can control my thing in Denmark; I can make the film I want to make... of course, I have to write a good script, all that, but if I do my job, it will happen.

Tobias Lindholm

Categorized in : Good Job Control Waiting

Denmark is a country built on a commercial fleet. That's basically what we have been doing. We're just a small country of islands, and every family has a sailor.

Tobias Lindholm

sailor islands country

Sometimes it seems like if you open up the door to reality and invite it in, it will just come flowing.

Tobias Lindholm

doors sometimes reality

It seems like as soon as you have written something, it dictates a story. So I need to be careful.

Tobias Lindholm

be-careful stories needs

Everybody can write a beginning and an ending, but to actually define that middle point where everything will go from professional to person, where everything will change, is always the hardest part, because it can very easily be too constructed, too artificial.

Tobias Lindholm

hardest middle writing

I never thought about writing the part where the pirates get on board the ship. I wasn't interested in that. I'm not an action director. I'm sure that other guys could do it a lot better. I couldn't put my heart into it.

Tobias Lindholm

guy heart writing

The camera cannot leave the man, but the man can leave the camera. It's in the style of documentary where you make an agreement between a camera and a man and say, "I'm going to film you now."

Tobias Lindholm

cameras style men

In real life, we're not walking around waiting for something to happen. We live our lives, and then suddenly we fall in love with somebody, and it's a big mess because you have a wife already, and it's going to destroy your life. And, at the same time, it's beautiful. Often, in films, it's not like that.

Tobias Lindholm

falling-in-love real beautiful

No doubt there is a Scandinavian wave. I guess everybody is just surfing their wave until it breaks and hoping it won't be too soon.

Tobias Lindholm

wave surfing doubt

After film school, I would write 8 hours a day on film and 8 hours a night on TV, and then sleep once and a while.

Tobias Lindholm

day sleep night school

My father was a soldier. He was a frogman in the special forces in Denmark before I was born, and always the reality of that inspired me. My mom is very left-wing, classic socialist, and she always talked about the solders as almost crazy, violent, sick people, and I want to confront that because its very judgmental, and I'm not sure it's true.

Tobias Lindholm

me crazy father people

My dream is that my kids grow up into nice people; that's my dream.

Tobias Lindholm

grow nice dream people

My mother - she's a good old classic Northern European socialist - she's totally wonderful, but she raised me up believing that rich people have stolen their money from poor people.

Tobias Lindholm

good me money mother

Denmark is a small nation of five million people, but our economy is completely dependent on our commercial fleet. Every family has some connection to it.

Tobias Lindholm

nation small family people

I have three sons, and the oldest wants to play pirates all the time. It has all these associations of living some kind of very free life. It's interesting for me as a filmmaker to show a whole different side of that.

Tobias Lindholm

free me time life

Denmark is a country built on a commercial fleet. That's basically what we have been doing. We're just a small country of islands, and every family has a sailor. So, in many ways, my father was a sailor before I was born.

Tobias Lindholm

born family country father

In 2007 and 2008, the first two Danish ships were hijacked. I started to research it. I've had the idea of writing in this arena for a long time, but I could never find the angle of what kind of story.

Tobias Lindholm

long-time research time long

I love to work with friends.

Tobias Lindholm

i-love friends work love

I've never been a soldier. In Denmark, at 18, as a male, you go in a draw, and if they pick you, you go and serve for a year. I didn't.

Tobias Lindholm

never go you soldier

Everyone in Denmark has at least two or three sailors in their family; sea travel is part of the DNA of our nation, and because of that, I'd always wanted to tell a story aboard a ship.

Tobias Lindholm

nation family sea travel

I studied screenwriting at film school and was constantly learning how to construct three-act dramas.

Tobias Lindholm

how learning film school