Susanne Bier
Susanne Bier is a Danish filmmaker. Bier is the first female director to collectively receive an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a European Film Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Bier made her feature film debut with Freud's Leaving Home. She has directed a string of films including Open Hearts, Brothers, After the Wedding, and In a Better World, where In a Better World won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. She directed the English-language films Things We Lost in the Fire, Love Is All You Need, Serena, and Bird Box.
On television, she directed the BBC One / AMC miniseries The Night Manager earning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. She also directed the HBO psychological miniseries The Undoing, the Showtime historical anthology series The First Lady, and the Netflix mystery series The Perfect Couple.
Early life and education
Susanne Bier was born to a Jewish family in Copenhagen, Denmark on 15 April 1960. The family of her father, Rudolf Salomon Baer, emigrated from Germany to Denmark in 1933 after Hitler's rise to power. The family of her mother, Heni, emigrated to Denmark from Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, to escape rising antisemitism. In 1943, the two families fled from Denmark to Sweden, together with most Danish Jews, to escape the deportation to the Nazi death camps. Three years after the end of World War II, they returned to Denmark. The effects of the Holocaust caused Bier's parents to instill the strong moral values and principles into their children. Later, the importance of human resilience and dignity would be a recurring theme in her films.During her schooling, she attended Niels Steensens Gymnasium. In interviews for the media as an adult, Bier describes herself as lacking in social skills as a child, who liked to play football with boys and preferred reading books to interacting with others. After high school, citing a desire to reconnect with her Jewish roots, she studied art at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. Later she would study architecture at the Architectural Association in London before finally returning to film and graduating from the National Film School of Denmark in 1987. De Saliges, Bier's graduation film, won first prize at the Munich film school festival and was subsequently distributed by Channel Four.
Career
1990–1999: early work and film debut
After directing music videos, commercials and the feature films Freud Flytter Hjemmefra, Det Bli'r i Familien, Pensionat Oscar and Sekten, Bier made a breakthrough in her home country of Denmark with the film The One and Only in 1999. A romantic comedy about the fragility of life, the film won a clutch of Danish Film Academy awards and established Bier's relationship with actress Paprika Steen. The film remains one of the most successful domestic films ever released in Denmark.A sidestep from the easy going charm of Livet är en schlager, Elsker dig for evigt brought Bier's work to much wider international attention and acclaim. Acutely observed and beautifully written by Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen, the film is a perceptive and painful exploration of broken lives and interconnected tragedies. Made under Dogme 95 regulations, the film also marked a move towards a more minimalist aesthetic.
Since the completion of Open Hearts, Bier's reputation has continued to ascend with the harrowing Brødre and the emotionally engaging Efter Brylluppet, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the 2007 Academy Awards. After her first American film, Things We Lost in the Fire starring Benicio del Toro and Halle Berry, Bier went on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film for In a Better World.
Also a maker of shorts, music videos and commercials, Bier's films typically meditate on pain, tragedy, and atonement. Bier is signed as a commercial director with international production company, SMUGGLER. After graduation, Bier was invited to Sweden to direct Freud's Leaving Home, which was critically acclaimed by film critics. The film follows a girl, Freud, from Sweden who comes from a Jewish family, and it became the first feature film in Sweden to depict Swedish-Jewish culture. With its heavily Jewish focus, the film "addresses the Jewish experience to an extent that is in rare in Scandinavian cinema". The film won ten awards and was nominated for an additional three. Her next film Family Matters continued exploration of complex, tabooed family relations begun in Freud's Leaving Home, including an incestuous relationship between brother and sister. Bier returned to taboo subjects with the film The One and Only in 1999. The film is a Danish romantic comedy starring Sidse Babett Knudsen, Niels Olsen, Rafael Edholm, and Paprika Steen in a story about two unfaithful married couples faced with becoming first-time parents. The film was considered to mark a modern transition in Danish romantic comedies, The film earned both the Robert Award and Bodil Award as the Best Film of 1999.
2000–2014: rise to prominence and acclaim
Following the influence of Dogme 95 manifesto, Bier directed the film Open Hearts in 2002. Open Hearts tells the story of two couples whose lives are traumatized by a car crash and adultery. Open Hearts received a 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes movie review website. Susanne Bier received the International Critics Award at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival. The film won both the Bodil and Robert awards for Best Danish Film in 2003.In Bier's next film Brothers we follow the story of two brothers, Michael and Jannik. The character of Michael has a promising military career, a beautiful wife and two beautiful girls; Michael is shown preparing for a deployment to Afghanistan early in the movie. His younger brother, Jannik, has recently been imprisoned for an attempted bank robbery. Michael picked up Jannik from prison the day before being deployed to Afghanistan; their already strained relationship is shown to be especially tense. While in Afghanistan, Michael's helicopter is shot down- all soldiers are presumed dead, but Michael and a fellow soldier below him are imprisoned. Michael is ultimately forced to kill his fellow soldier. Sarah is supported by Jannik who, against all odds, takes care of the family. Soon, Sarah and Jannik become closer as he fulfills the space/role previously held by his brother. Michael is ultimately rescued by US forces and is able to return home, but to disastrous results. The film tackles the theme of the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and the psychological aftermath of prisoners of war. The plot shows inspiration from Homer's Odyssey. It won several awards, including the audience award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival UCMF Movie Music Award. An opera based on the story of the film by Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason was premiered in Aarhus on 16 August 2017. It was commissioned by Den Jyske Opera. Kerstin Perski wrote the libretto and the director was Kasper Holten. To celebrate Aarhus as the European capital of culture 2017 three stage works were produced; a musical, dance and an opera all based on films by Bier were commissioned and performed in Musikhuset.
Bier's next film tells the story of Jacob Petersen who manages an Indian orphanage. With a small staff, he works as hard as he can to keep the orphanage afloat and is personally invested in the young charges - in particular, Pramod, a young boy Jacob has cared for since the boy's birth. The film was a critical and popular success and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Time magazine's Richard Schickel named the film one of the Top 10 Movies of 2007, ranking it at #4, calling it a "dark, richly mounted film". While Schickel saw the film as possibly "old-fashioned stylistically, and rather manipulative in its plotting", he also saw "something deeply satisfying in the way it works out the fates of its troubled, yet believable characters." The film was remade as the English-language After the Wedding in 2019, starring Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, and Billy Crudup.
In this film we follow the character of Audrey who has been married for eleven years with Brian and leads a well-to-do life, but suddenly her husband dies after trying to defend a woman from an assault. Left alone with two children, Audrey has to face the terrible pain of loss, so she decides to welcome Jerry, her friend's friend, with problems of drug addiction. The two will establish a relationship that will force them to unite their pains, helping each other to make a change in their lives, the difficult search for happiness. Critics gave the film generally favorable reviews. As of 29 January 2008 on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 64% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 117 reviews. On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 63 out of 100, based on 30 reviews. The two leads received praise for their performances, particularly Benicio Del Toro as he received immense acclaim for his portrayal of Jerry, considered one of his best roles to date.
In a Better World is a 2010 Danish drama thriller film written by Anders Thomas Jensen and directed by Susanne Bier. The film stars Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, and Ulrich Thomsen in a story which takes place in small-town Denmark and a refugee camp in Africa. A Danish majority production with co-producers in Sweden, In a Better World won the 2011 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film as well as the award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards. Director Susanne Bier said: "Our experiment in this film is about looking at how little it really takes before a child – or an adult – thinks something is deeply unjust. It really doesn't take much, and I find that profoundly interesting. And scary." Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 77% out of 114 professional critics gave the film a positive review, with the site consensus stating that "In a Better World is a sumptuous melodrama that tackles some rather difficult existential and human themes." Metacritic gave the film a score of 65, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Kim Skotte called the film a "powerful and captivating drama" in Politiken. Out of the four collaborations between Jensen and Bier, he considered In a Better World to be the one most similar to Jensen's solo films and compared the combination of biblical themes and high entertainment value to Jensen's 2005 film Adam's Apples. Peter Nielsen of Dagbladet Information called In a Better World "in all ways a successful film", and although there "is no doubt that Susanne Bier can tell a good story", he was not entirely convinced: "She can seduce, and she can push the completely correct emotional buttons, so that mothers' as well as fathers' hearts are struck, but she doesn't earnestly drill her probe into the meat."
In 2012, Bier directed Den skaldede frisør, a 2012 Danish romantic comedy film starring Pierce Brosnan and Trine Dyrholm. In 2013 she was a member of the jury at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. In 2014, she directed her second American feature, dark romantic drama Serena starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, and shortly after followed up with Danish drama A Second Chance starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Ulrich Thomsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Maria Bonnevie. In 2013, Love Is All You Need was selected as best comedy film at the 26th European Film Awards.
In 2014, Bier directed Serena, based on the 2008 novel of the same name by American author Ron Rash. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper as newlyweds running a timber business in 1930s North Carolina. Serena has received negative reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 16% based on 106 reviews with an average rating of 4.3/10. The website's critical consensus states "Serena unites an impressive array of talent on either side of the cameras – then leaves viewers to wonder how it all went so wrong." On Metacritic the film has a score of 36 out of 100 based on reviews from 29 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". In 2014, Bier directed A Second Chance, a Danish thriller film. The film stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Ulrich Thomsen, Maria Bonnevie, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Lykke May Andersen. It was screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.