Food Club
Director: Barbara Topsøe-Rothenborg Run Time: 98 min. Rating: NR Release Year: 2021
Starring: Karoline Hamm, Kirsten Olesen, Rasmus Botoft, Stina Ekblad
Country: Denmark
Language: Danish, English, and Italian, with English subtitles
Presented in the Virtual Screening Room in partnership with Samuel Goldwyn.
“It is never too late to start a new life, especially if you know how to make a good tomato sauce and have some good friends to help you face up to the “crap” that is old age. It is a hymn to the strength of women.”
– Vittoria Scarpa, Cineuropa
About the film:
An uplifting drama from a female-led team of critically acclaimed Danish filmmakers.
Marie recently found herself abandoned on Christmas Eve by her husband, eternal bachelorette Berling lives the sweet life while denying her age, and Vanja is still living in the past, unable to move on from her late husband. The three lifelong girlfriends travel to Italy and attend a cooking course in Puglia where they each find the opportunity to redefine themselves and discover that it’s never too late to live a more fulfilling life.
About the filmmakers:
Food Club is the fourth feature for director Barbara Topsøe-Rothenborg. Now a popular Nordic filmmaker, Topsøe-Rothenborg grew up acting on TV and film sets. She played the titular role in the TV series Nana (1987), and lent her voice to Denmark’s master of animation, Jannik Hastrup, in War of the Birds (1990) and The Secret Weapon (1995).
At age 21, her desire to tell stories led her to move to Los Angeles for school. She honed her skills as assistant director on many projects, including an episode of the GLAAD Media Award-nominated series Exes & Ohs in 2007. In 2009, she directed and co-wrote her first feature film, Regner Grasten’s American version of Love at First Hiccup based on the novel by Dennis Jürgensen. The original Danish film opened in 1999 and became such a hit that it spawned multiple sequels.
Topsøe-Rothenborg first worked with film producer and screenwriter Grasten on his family films, beginning with a role in The Crumbs (1991) early in her career. After returning to Denmark, she directed Crumbs: All at Stake (2014), and received the Audience Award at the Danish Film Awards for One-Two-Three Now! (2016). She also directed several critically acclaimed comedies, including the satirical series Sjit Happens.
The female-led filmmaking team of Food Club also includes Anne-Marie Olesen Thinghuus, writer for the Black Widows TV series and the Danish Film Award-nominated Frode og alle de andre rødder (2008), and producers Nina Lyng and Eva Juel Hammerich, whose film The Shamer’s Daughter won five Danish Film Awards in 2016.
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