The resounding second feature film by the rising star of Danish cinema, Tobias Lindholm, is a gripping and stupefying story of modern-day buccaneering, shot in raw naturalistic style.
One of the pic’s main protagonists is Mikkel Hartmann, the cook on a Danish cargo ship with a crew of seven. When the vessel is ambushed by Somali pirates the shipping company management soon notice that something is amiss with the MV Rozen, as it has gone off course. They soon learn why. The company’s headquarters is contacted by a representative of the buccaneers informing them that they have seized control over the ship, and taken the crew hostages. The company solicits a British negotiation expert who has vast experience in solving similar cases. The pirates soon demand a ransom of 15 million dollars – a considerably higher sum than the Copenhagen negotiation chamber is willing to pay. The tension heightens…
»In the beginning for me it was a very local story and in 2007-2008 the first hijackings happened against Danish ships and it was all numbers. It was like that many days, that much money, this many men, and you never really got deeper into it. So I decided to start to research and tell the story and that’s one of the beautiful things about fiction – you can actually bring the audience inside these situations.«
- Tobias Lindholm
Tobias Lindholm
Born in 1977 in Denmark. Screenwriter graduate from the National Film School of Denmark, 2007, Lindholm has written several episodes of the BAFTA winner Danish political series Borgen. Alongside Thomas Vinterberg, he co-wrote the 2010 feature film Submarino and The Hunt. The resounding feature debut R was a writer-director collaboration between Lindholm and Michael Noer. A Hijacking marks his solo directorial debut.