Danish film and TV director Charlotte Sieling has lined up her biggest project to date. As Screen Daily reports, the “Queen of the South” and “Homeland” helmer is making an $8M-budget film about legendary Scandinavian queen Margrete The First, who merged Denmark, Norway, and Sweden into one sovereign nation
Entitled “Margrete,” Sieling said the feature presents “the true story of the strongest, most fascinating but also most under-exposed ruler that Scandinavia has ever seen.” Set in 1402, “Margrete” focuses on one contentious month in the monarch’s life. A man surfaces purporting to be her son, who had died 15 years prior at age 17. This not only threatens Margrete’s position, it complicates her adopted son’s plans to marry into English royalty.
“It’s a violent time and she has to look over her shoulder,” Sieling described. But the dangers of royal life won’t be the film’s sole focus: the director also intends to depict Margrete’s family life and sexual identity. “This woman is 50 years old. In this man’s world, she’s in power,” the director observed. “And we have to bring her sexual life into that, and her motherhood. We need to explore this woman on many different levels.”
Sieling plans to remain faithful to Margrete The First’s life while also injecting the film with contemporary issues and themes — including women’s empowerment. “Margrete made this feminist legislation that any woman who had been assaulted during war could come get money at her castle,” she explained. “We are going to be close to reality story-wise and politically, but then all the moments when we can mirror ourselves into it, we’re going to do that,” Sieling continued. “I want to break the code and go my own way, but you have to start by knowing reality and studying everything from that time, but the information surrounding the mystery is intriguing but also quite sparse, so we can invent it too. I want to make a very modern movie.”
Jesper Fink (“Before the Frost”) is writing “Margrete,” and Birgitte Skov and Lars Bredo Rahbek are producing. Shooting is expected to take place fall 2019 in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. The film’s dialogue will be in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, English, and German.
The Danish Film Institute is supporting the project and the producers are trying to bring on Nordic and international financiers as well. “Big-budget period movies tend to be such a male domain,” said Bredo Rahbek. “We have such good female directors in Denmark but they don’t usually get that higher budget level.”
No cast has been set yet, but Sieling commented, “We have such strong Scandinavian actresses, this can be cast with an amazing lead.”
Sieling is also attached to direct “The Courier,” a love story set during the WWII-era Swiss banking scandal. Her previous credits include “The Man,” a feature about a famous artist and the son he just found out about, and episodes of “Good Behavior,” “The Americans,” and “Borgen.” She received a BAFTA TV Award nomination for her work on “Bron/Broen.”
