Afro-Danish Film Night: EMPIRE – provocative, beautifully made, absurd and award-winning

“Denmark has a long and extensive colonial history. We decided not to tackle that. EMPIRE is a humble invitation to join a conversation – pure and simple.

The past doesn’t disappear just because we don’t talk about it. We believe we owe it to ourselves, our past and future generations to at least have the conversation.”

These were the words of the screenwriter and lead actress Anna Neye in 2023, when she and director Frederikke Asöck received the Nordic Council Film Prize for EMPIRE.

EMPIRE is a human tale of power and interdependence. Hovering between profound seriousness and absurd comedy, it challenges the historical amnesia of the Danish people. The setting is St. Croix in the Danish West Indies. The year, 1848. Anna Heegaard (Anna Neye) and Petrine (Sara Fanta Traore) are close friends. Although both women are coloured, their living conditions are very different. Anna is free and owns the slave Petrine. Anna lives with the Governor-General Peter von Scholten in his country house, where she runs the home, controls the purse strings and is in charge of  Petrine, her beloved and trusted housekeeper. Everything is apparently as it should be until rumours of a rebellion start to fly. After all, what side are Anna and Petrine really on – and is it the same one?

The rest of the cast includes: Caroline Henderson, Claus Riis Østergaard, Jesper Groth, Christopher Læssø, James Sampson, Søs Sif Thiele, Jesper Asholt, Anders Brink, Prince Yaw, Cherie Malone, Karen Makupa, Peter Gantzler, Mikkel Hilgart, Tyler Errol Murray etc.

In 2024, EMPIRE was nominated for four Bodil awards (including Best Danish Film) and six Robert awards (including Danish Feature Film of the Year, Best Female Actress of the Year and Best Female Supporting Actress of the Year).

The film relates to a number of the issues sparked by the Senegalese artist Omar Victor Diop in his current exhibition at Kunsten. Peter Juul (Kunsten’s Head of Learning) will give an introduction to the exhibition before the screening of the film.

Original title: Viften (EMPIRE)

Running time: 95 minutes

Language: Danish and English

Subtitles: Danish

Suitable for 11 years and over

More about the Omar Victor Diop exhibition

Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg recently opened a special exhibition devoted to the work of the critically acclaimed Senegalese artist Omar Victor Diop (b. 1980). Alluding to both past and present, Diop’s photographs spotlight prominent Africans from all over the world, whom world history has often forgotten – and black resistance in a global perspective. Read more here.

In close collaboration with the sociologist, social commentator and consultant Prince Henry Kwesi Asare, Kunsten has put together a series of events to activate the exhibition and the themes it tackles, shedding a Danish light on the exhibition.

All events related to the exhibition.