Niels Arden Oplev

NIELS ARDEN OPLEV - Director
Born 1961

Niels Arden Oplev graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 1989. His first feature film Portland (1996) was selected for the main competition in Berlin and his second feature Chop Chop (2001) received both National Danish Film Awards Bodil and Robert. Oplev has worked as a director on the TV-series successes Taxa, Unit One, Defense and The Eagle The three last mentioned as creator of the series. Unit One and The Eagle both received the prestigious Emmy award for best foreign TV series in 2002 and 2005. His most recent feature We Shall Overcome (2006) became the most successful Danish film in 2006 and was among other awards honored with The Crystal Bear at Berlin Film Festival same year. Oplev's next film will be based on the first book in the bestselling trilogy The Millenium by Swedish author Stieg Larsson.

In Worlds Apart Oplev yet again shows his partiality for portraying the struggle against imperturbable authorities and static traditions. But where the autobiographic We Shall Overcome dealt with new times in the province and elementary school, Worlds Apart takes on the conflicts within the controversial and religious sect Jehovah's Witnesses. The film is based on a newspaper article about the former witness Tabita, who at 17 succeeded in breaking away from the sect she grew up in, by choosing freedom and love as opposed to Jehovah's religious standards. Oplev chose to let the main character Sara's fight for the right to love and freedom be a symbol of the eternal, critical stand towards the kind of dogmatic authority which fundamentalist religions are only one part of.

(this biography was written at the time of the cinematic release for Worlds Apart)