THE END by Joshua Oppenheimer will premiere at the 51st Telluride Film Festival. Producer Signe Byrge Sørensen (ACE Denmark) participated with the project in the ACE 27 Annual Programme.
A Golden Age musical about one of the last families on earth, starring Tilda Swinton as MOTHER and Michael Shannon as FATHER. When the sudden arrival of a stranger, Moses Ingram as GIRL, threatens the family’s luxurious compound deep underground, George MacKay as SON begins to question their seemingly perfect existence.
How did the ACE Annual Programme benefit you as a producer, and your ACE project?
The ACE Annual Programme was hugely beneficial both to me personally and to THE END. During the workshop, I got to test the first finance plan and my finance strategies. I found key collaborators and I got inspiring input regarding the first presentations of the project. I also found a network, which has become extremely important to me, because this is where I find new collaborators I can learn from, great case stories during the Annual Reunions, and this is where I found a core group of professionals across Europe, who really understand what challenges we face as producers and how films are made from idea to final DCP.
What was the most challenging in getting this film from script to the screen?
My learning curve has been extreme at times. This is my first fiction film, and it is a musical. Quite a challenge and I could not have made it without my amazing, experienced and committed co-producers Viola Fügen from The Match Factory/Mubi (Germany), Conor Barry from Wild Atlantic (Ireland), Flaminio Zadra from Dorje Films (Italy), Tracy O’Riordan from Moonspun Films (UK) and Ann Lundberg from Anagram (Sweden), nor without my financial consultants Sarah Nagel and Isabell Wiegand from In Between Films. Most of them are part of ACE. The most challenging for me has been the time pressure and the economic pressure. I have been co-producing documentaries around the world for more than 20 years, so I am used to complex finance plans with many partners, and also to some pretty wild stuff happening as part of my working day, but the challenge of working with agents, lawyers and banks on a high-level budget, that required a cash flow loan was a whole new experience for me.
What’s ahead for you and your company? What are you currently working on?
We finished the DCP last week. We are still in the middle of preparing the release. Once that is done, I plan to sleep. Luckily, I have a strong production team at Final Cut for Real in Denmark consisting of producers Maria Kristensen, Esther Nissen and Alberte Lyngbo and post producer Francesc Sitges-Sardá plus my company partners Anne Köhncke, Janus Billeskov Jansen and Joshua Oppenheimer. So in parallel with the postproduction of THE END, we have started to develop several new documentaries together with for example veteran documentary directors Camilla Nielsson (PRESIDENT), Simon Lereng Wilmont (A HOUSE MADE OF SPLINTERS) and some documentary talents. And then Joshua Oppenheimer, the director of THE END, and I have started talking about new ideas, but it is still far too early to say anything about what that could lead to.
