This week, award-winning makeup artist Bjørg Serup bid farewell to the Danish film industry.
She wrote in an article published in the “New York Times”: “I took sick leave due to a work injury due to severe stress and cannot expect to be able to return to the film industry or any other full-time job again.” echo, The country’s film industry magazine.
reason? She blamed her stress-related cognitive impairment on the way she cut production time and budget to meet the current almost bottomless demand for Danish drama.
This year, Serup began directing Lars Von Trier’s comeback of the cult hospital comedy in the 90s kingdom, She likes it very much, last year she was Award-winning true crime miniseries investigation, And the Norwegian royal drama Atlantic crossing.
It was this summer that she collapsed after a historical drama she was working on was postponed causing it to conflict with another project.
Serup’s article was published two days after 415 people in the Danish film industry, including several well-known actors, Sign the open letter The country’s production companies warn that the huge workload and pressure are leading to “threats of harassment, bullying and disrupting people’s careers”.
The letter read: “People who have just worked should not report depression and stress, or leave the industry altogether just because they need to squeeze a little more lemon.”
Emilie Nordentoft, the production designer who organized the letter with actor Dorte Rømer, said that people’s desire for content from streaming companies, such as Netflix, HBO and Amazon have pushed this industry to a tipping point.
“We now have a streaming company Denmark, We have HBO, we have Netflix, it’s great that we have this diversity, but this has caused the demand for content to be constant,” Nordentoft told the media ObserverPeople just need to run faster. When people are under pressure, they will start yelling, and yelling is not good. “
She said the letter originated from a closed Facebook group she set up for people who felt bullied.
“I started to receive calls and messages from people who whispered how good we were doing this. But they were scared. I understand why they were scared because they were bullied. It’s like,’We will ruin you Career, you will never come back’.”
Netflix currently has two new series, choose and Elves, In preparation for Jannik Tai Mosholt and Christian Potalivo, they are the producers of the company’s popular Doomsday miniseries rain, And also completed the production of the Nordic black crime series Chestnut man And thrillers Loving adults.
HBO released the first Danish original series this year, Kamikaze, And Apple, Amazon and Disney are all seeking to commission the Danish series.
Jørgen Ramskov, CEO of the Danish Producers Association, agrees that the demand for streaming services is driving the industry to “full capacity.”
“We have encountered situations where production companies cannot produce because they cannot Access to skilled labor,” he said. “We don’t have many, but I think we are very close to the edge. “
Meta Louise Foldager Sørensen, CEO of SAM Productions, who has produced two Netflix original works, Chestnut man and Ragnarok, Is currently producing a new series of popular political dramas bail, Was forced to postpone.
“I just postponed production for a month because we couldn’t find a production designer,” she said. “I have a big problem with the crew.”
However, for her, this is a golden age. “Business is booming. Many anchors who come to Denmark have a big appetite. This is a wonderful and positive thing,” she continued. “But their schedule originates from countries with other work cultures. I like to work with Netflix. They are a very good partner, but I find it difficult to meet their expectations of the speed at which we can produce TV series, and at the same time have a happy Employee.”
In the 1990s, with the emergence of directors such as Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, the Danish film industry began to make breakthroughs Kill And political drama bail In 2012, Danish TV attracted the interest of foreign broadcasters and became a surprisingly popular international show. Foldager attributes Denmark’s success to “storytelling”, while Nordentoft considers it to be a “very dedicated and hardworking person.”
For Folderger and Ramskov, the solution to bullying and working conditions is to ensure that film workers can report abuse through existing systems and adhere to union rules to be effective. “We must understand what went wrong before we can take action,” Ramskov said. “If we just have these rumors about how bad this situation is and how bad it is, it will be difficult to act.”
Serup said in her article that this issue is structural and not a matter of bullying producers and directors.
“When I started making movies, they spent eight weeks making a feature film,” she said. “The last movie I made was a time movie. They have five and a half weeks. The budget is far from enough.”
Nordentoft believes that, in a sense, industry workers are punished because of their advantages. “What I heard from people is that they found that Denmark is clearly a country where film workers are very efficient,” she said. “But we also need time. We are not robots. This is not a factory where you just spit out movies. Sometimes it makes people feel like a factory.”
Netflix, HBO and Amazon all declined to comment.
