Oscars: Denmark Selects ‘The Girl With The Needle’ As Best International Feature Submission

Denmark has selected Magnus von Horn’s The Girl With the Needle as its Oscar submission for the Best International Feature Film category.

Starring Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm, The Girl With the Needle riffs on one of Denmark’s most notorious murder cases to weave a poetic and dark fairytale about the people living on the margins in the aftermath of the First World War. 

Karoline (Sonne), a young factory worker, is struggling to survive in post WW1 Copenhagen. When she finds herself unemployed, abandoned and pregnant, she meets Dagmar (Dyrholm), a charismatic woman running an underground adoption agency, helping mothers to find foster homes for their unwanted children. With nowhere else to turn, Karoline takes on the role of a wet-nurse. A strong connection is formed between the two women, but Karoline’s world shatters when she stumbles upon the shocking truth behind her work.

Deadline’s review called the film, “an unequivocal and beguiling triumph.”

The Girl With the Needle debuted in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and is von Horn’s first Danish-language feature. His Swedish-produced feature debut, The Here After, premiered in Directors’ Fortnight in 2015, while his second feature film, the Polish-produced Sweat, was part of the official program of the Covid-canceled Cannes in 2020. 

Four Danish films have won an Oscar in the International Feature Film category: Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round (2021), Susanne Bier’s In a Better World (2011), Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror (1989) and Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast (1988).

The Girl With the Needle was chosen from a shortlist of three films that also included Echo of You by Zara Zerny and Sons by Gustav Möller.