LevelK Boards Psychological Nordic Thriller Debut Anathema
Copenhagen based international sales and aggregation house LevelK has boarded Anathema, Ea Johanne Sandberg and Alpha Nord’s feature debut. Produced by Anne Borggard Sørensen and Janne Hjeltnes for Empathitude Pictures, this psychological thriller dives into the dark underbelly of a seemingly idyllic community, asking how far people will go to protect the illusion of a perfect life, and what happens when someone finally refuses to play along. Production is scheduled to kick off in Spring 2027.
“We are very happy to have boarded Anathema,” stresses Natascha Degnova, LevelK’s Head of PR and Marketing who was closely involved in the acquisition of the project that reached the company via its strategic alliance with Publikum. “What excited us about the project was the fresh take on a known genre and the guts of the two young female directors to approach taboo subjects in an unconventional manner and thereby mark their debut with a clear what the f*** film, which will have people do a double take.”
Anathema is a visceral, unsettling exploration of repression, denial and collective madness. At its centre is Dafne, a young woman who discovers that the greatest horror isn’t death, but her town’s refusal to acknowledge it. When Bror, the man she and her mother live with, vanishes, she begins to question her own identity and the community’s fragile stability. His eventual return, bloated, drowned and unmistakably dead, pushes the town into full‑scale delusion: no one admits what has happened, and they insist on celebrating his wedding, even if it means sacrificing his fiancée.
“What excited us about the project was the fresh take on a known genre and the guts of the two young female directors to approach taboo subjects in an unconventional manner and thereby mark their debut with a clear what the f*** film, which will have people do a double take” Natascha Degnova
Degnova adds that “this is the kind of project that fits very well into our strategy of including more genre titles to our slate, as well as of getting involved in projects before production, having a full journey and collaboration with the filmmakers from script to worldwide release.”
“What makes the project particularly exciting to us is that it represents an extraordinary Gen Z approach to storytelling and filmmaking: instinctive, genre-fluid and unafraid of breaking with convention" Anne Borggard Sørensen and Janne Hjeltnes
“Anathema is exactly the kind of film we want to champion: character-driven, boundary-pushing and emotionally resonant, with a strong creative vision at its core,” say producers Anne Borggard Sørensen and Janne Hjeltnes at Empathitude Pictures. “What makes the project particularly exciting to us is that it represents an extraordinary Gen Z approach to storytelling and filmmaking: instinctive, genre-fluid and unafraid of breaking with convention. It is the kind of filmmaking that does not simply work within an existing cinematic language but actively pushes it forward and expands what contemporary cinema can be.”
“Dafne combines the truth-telling clarity of the boy in ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes‘ with the reluctant awakening of Neo in The Matrix,” both directors explain. “If she were given the choice in the beginning of the film, she would, without any doubt, have chosen the ‘blue pill’. But that isn’t an option, and as things escalate, she finds herself with a choice: to speak up or to become no one, and when she finally speaks up, cracks start to form under her feet, leaving the village to become more and more desperate in their attempt to make everything seem normal."
Anathema is directed and written by Sandberg and Nord and produced by Borggard Sørensen and Hjeltnes for Empathitude Pictures (NO), with Junafilm (D) and Empathitude Pictures (DK) as co-production partners. The news about LevelK boarding the project was announced at New Nordic Films in Haugesund where Anathemais part of the New Nordic Co-Production Market line-up.
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Christian De Schutter
