Synopse

The rise and fall of a Danish visionary: veteran director Bille August films an epic of turn-of-the-century Denmark.Denmark, around 1900. Young Per has had enough of the tedium of Jutland, his dominant father and his sternly religious family. He's mad about industrialisation and the ideas of the Modern Age and sets out for Copenhagen to become an engineer. Parallel to his studies, he works on a revolutionary waterway project. The idea of the century or merely a pipe dream? While Per at first enjoys a certain amount of recognition for his ideas, he soon gets the impression that Denmark is no place for visionaries.

Regie

BILLE AUGUST (*1948) trained to be a photographer before studying film. His drama Pelle, the Conqueror won the Oscar for best foreign-language film in 1987 and the Golden Palm in Cannes. The House of the Spirits also won several awards in 1994.

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