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Cannes: ‘Game of Thrones’ Actor Pilou Asbæk Stars in Danish WWII Drama ‘Befrielsen’
'Game of Thrones' Actor Pilou Asbæk Stars in Danish WW2 Drama 'Befrielsen.'

Cannes: ‘Game of Thrones’ Actor Pilou Asbæk Stars in Danish WWII Drama ‘Befrielsen’

‘Befrielsen’© Andreas Bastiansen

Game of Thrones and Borgen star Pilou Asbæk will next be seen in the Danish period drama Befrielsen from I Kill Giants director Anders Walter.

The drama, which TrustNordisk has picked up for international sales and is pitching to buyers at the Cannes Film Market, is set in 1945 just after Denmark was liberated from Nazi occupation. Some 250,000 German refugees, who came to Denmark shortly before liberation, are put into internment camps, including one in a local high school. Asbæk plays the school headmaster who, together with his wife and children, must decide whether to support the Danes’ anti-German sentiment or try and help the refugees.

The film’s Danish title roughly translates to “liberation,” but the movie does not have an official English title yet.

Walter wrote the script to Befrielsen, which Miriam Nørgaard, Mette Høst Hansen and Tomas Radoor produced for Nordisk Film in collaboration with Growing Studios. Budgeted at $4.3 million (€4.1 million), the film has finished shooting and is set for a Sept. 23, 2023 bow locally.

TrustNordisk will be selling the film at Cannes off the cast and an English-language script and expects to screen footage for buyers at the AFM later this year.

Walter’s 2017 feature debut I Kill Giants premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, and his 2013 short Helium won the Oscar for best live-action short.