The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) kicks off in less than a month, and one of the films making its North American debut at TIFF is the Danish black comedy Men & Chicken, which stars Mads Mikkelsen amongst its top-notch cast.
Photo by Rolf Konow © M&M Productions A/S
Men & Chicken (Mænd & Høns) swept the box office when it opened in January 2015 in cinemas across Denmark, and won the Silver Méliès Award for Best European Fantastic Feature Film at the Neuchâtel Fantastic Film Festival in July, following its international premiere in June at the Münich Film Festival.
Written and directed by Oscar® winner Anders Thomas Jensen (Adam’s Apples, After the Wedding, The Duchess), Men & Chicken stars some of the top names in Euro TV and film, including Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal, Unit One, Casino Royale), David Dencik (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, A Royal Affair, The Borgias), Nikolaj Lie Kaas (The Killing, The Keeper of Lost Causes, The Absent One), Søren Malling (1864, Borgen, The Killing), and Nicolas Bro (Bankerot, 1864, The Killing).
In the film, Dencik and Mikkelsen play Gabriel and Elias, respectively — brothers who are vastly different and get the shock of their lives when they learn, via a videotape made by their father who’s just died, that he wasn’t their biological dad after all. That father is living on the remote island of Ork.
So Gabriel and Elias set off for Ork to meet the family they didn’t know they had, including presumed half-brothers Gregor (Kaas), Franz (Malling), and Josef (Bro), each of whom has eccentricities, not to mention the same facial feature as the two brothers. However, their reunion at the dilapidated sanitarium-cum-mansion doesn’t go as expected, and Gabriel and Elias start to discover the truth about themselves and their new-found relatives.
Men & Chicken, produced by M&M Productions with partial funding from the Danish Film Institute, will be shown as part of TIFF’s Vanguard program for offbeat films.
The Toronto International Film Festival runs from 10-20 September 2015.
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