Toronto: Jonas Arnby to Direct We Watched the Sun Disappear (EXCLUSIVE)

Publish date: 2024-01-08

Danish up-and-comer Jonas Arnby, who made his feature debut with Cannes’ Critics’ Week player “When Animals Dream,” is set to direct “We Watched the Sun Disappear.”

Profile Pictures, the Copenhagen-based company founded by Jacob Jarek, Ditte Milsted and Thor Sigurjonsson in late 2011, is producing the movie which is now in development.

Penned by Irish scribe Michael Kinirons, who co-wrote of the upcoming “Strangerland” with Nicole Kidman, Hugo Weaving and Joseph Fiennes, “Sun” is based on real events that took place on Greenland’s ice fields in early 19th century. It centers around a Danish rescue expedition that had gone horribly wrong, leaving two men isolated in Greenland, struggling against cold, a hostile environment and each other.

“‘We Watched the Sun Disappear’ contains some of the same elements that turned me on with ‘When Animals Dream.’ It has a very cinematographic backdrop and is set within the same kind of microcosmos,” Arnby said.

The director explained that he envisioned the film as “a psychological drama describing the troubled and intense relationship between two young men who face harsh circumstances and struggle to survive.”

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Arnby will transpose the 19th century story to modern times in order to turn it into a contempo thriller.

The project — budgeted in the $3.8 million range — is backed by the Danish Film Institute. Kinirons is repped by Camille McCurry at London’s United Agents; Arnby is repped by Scott Greenberg, Maha Dakhil and Alexandra Trustman at CAA.

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