This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Privacy Overview
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.
3rd Party Cookies
This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.
Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.
Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!
Director's Statement
QUEEN OF HEARTS is the story of a tragic fall from grace.
I’ve made many mistakes in my life. I’ve made bad decisions, faltered when it mattered, and shown poor judgement over and over again.
Some of the missteps can be overlooked and boxed away. Some have had painful consequences for others, and myself, and the ensuing shame and guilt of harming others has created a burden I have to carry: A burden which continues to shape me for better and for worse.
That’s how it is for most people: our flaws and insufficiencies define us. They help us grow if we have the capacity to admit our errors, but if we are not capable of doing so they can taint and shatter us, and eventually create great inner loneliness.
In QUEEN OF HEARTS, a powerful woman makes a series of irreversible decisions that have unimaginable consequences for her and the people she holds dear. The film explores how far we are willing to go, once those choices are made, to protect ourselves and maintain the status quo in our existence.
Power is a strong overall theme. The power structures of families often convey truths about power structures in general; the apparent yet often invisible power hierarchy in families fascinates me because it is seldom spoken about, yet lived almost by primal instinct.
With this story, I want to explore the sense of entitlement that comes with being in power and what can happen when we do not take the responsibility that comes with authority seriously, whether it is in our private or professional lives.
We have a tendency in the world of fiction to tell stories about the idea that there is something good in the evil, but we seldom tell stories about the evil in the good, even though it also contains eternal truths about human behaviour. It’s my ambition to address this schism and at the same time aim towards telling a story where spectators are confronted with their own beliefs and are encouraged to take a stand as the story plays out.
To enhance this vision, I choose to block many of the scenes of the film somewhat democratically – in one-takes and in two-shots, in opposition to consistently maneuvering the audience by cutting to close-ups to underline dramatic significance or change of emotional state.
Even though there is an obvious primary main character dramaturgically, it was important for me to leave space visually for the spectators to shape their own opinions in regard to the characters' actions. By doing so, I hope to empower the story to force questions not necessarily provide answers.