Bodil Awards 2008: White Night topped Danish Cinema nominations, but The Art of Crying named Best Film
2008 Bodil Award winners: Imperial Cinema in Copenhagen on Feb. 24.
Jannik Johansen’s drama White Night received the most nominations – five in all – for the 2007 Danish Film Critics Association’s Bodil Awards. The film follows a real estate agent (Best Actor nominee Lars Brygmann) who attempts to make amends for having accidentally killed a man in a barroom brawl.
The other best film nominees are: Peter Schønau Fog’s eventual winner The Art of Crying, a black comedy about an abusive father in a Jutland community; Natasha Arthy’s Fighter, about a girl who wants to become a kung fu fighter despite her Turkish family’s disapproval; and Morten Hartz Kaplers’s AFR, a mockumentary about the assassination of Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen – an avid supporter of the invasion of Iraq – which “reveals” that the married p.m. was gay. (Though very right-wing in many of his socio-economic policies, Rasmussen is reportedly a supporter of gay marriages in Denmark’s Lutheran church.) Kaplers himself plays Rasmussen’s lover-assassin.
“Seamlessly put together and with considerable aplomb,” says Russell Edwards in Variety, “the mockumentary mercilessly subverts Rasmussen’s real-life actions and statements. Legal consequences in Denmark may be dire, but this agitprop work by writer-director-thesp Kaplers is a tour de force.”
Best Film
AFR – Dir.: Morten Hartz Kaplers
* The Art of Crying / Kunsten at græde i kor – Dir.: Peter Schønau Fog
Fighter / Fightgirl Ayse – Dir.: Natasha Arthy
White Night / Hvid nat – Dir.: Jannik JohansenBest American Film
The Darjeeling Limited – Dir.: Wes Anderson
I’m Not There – Dir.: Todd Haynes
* Letters from Iwo Jima – Dir.: Clint Eastwood
Paranoid Park – Dir.: Gus Van Sant
Zodiac – Dir.: David FincherBest Non-American Foreign Film
Eastern Promises – Dir.: David Cronenberg (Canada)
* Pan’s Labyrinth – Dir.: Guillermo del Toro (Spain | Mexico)
Persepolis – Dir.: Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi (France)
Reprise – Dir.: Joachim Trier (Norway)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – Dir.: Cristian Mungiu (Romania)Best Actor
* Jesper Asholt – The Art of Crying
Kim Bodnia – Echo / Ekko
Lars Brygmann – White Night
David Dencik – Outside Love / Udenfor kærligheden
Jannik Lorenzsen – The Art of CryingBest Actress
Rikke Louise Andersson – White Night
* Noomi Rapace – Daisy Diamond
Sonja Richter – Cecilie
Paprika Steen – The Substitute / Vikaren
Semra Turan – FighterBest Supporting Actor
Dejan Cukic – The Early Years Erik Nietzsche Part 1 / De unge år: Erik Nietzsche sagaen del 1
* Morten Grunwald – White Night
Nikolaj Kopernikus – Island of Lost Souls / De fortabte sjæles ø
Søren Malling – The Early Years Erik Nietzsche Part 1
Cyron Bjørn Melville – FighterBest Supporting Actress
Anne Sophie Byder – White Night
Stine Fischer Christensen – Echo
Trine Dyrholm – Daisy Diamond
* Charlotte Fich – Just Another Love Story / Kærlighed på film
Hanne Hedelund – The Art of CryingBest Documentary
* The Monastery – Dir.: Pernille Rose GronkjaerBest Cinematography
* Just Another Love Story & The Substitute – Dan LaustsenHonorary Bodil
Former Danish Film Museum director Ib Monty
Screenwriter-director Marguerite Engberg
Actor Niels JensenSpecial Bodil
3D production company Ghost Digital Production House for its work on Island of Lost Souls
“Bodil Awards 2008: The Art of Crying” notes
*last modified in February 2026.