Pelle the Conqueror

Bille August's Pelle the Conqueror is the rare Scandinavian period film that swept the major international prizes in a single year: the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1988 and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1989 ceremony. Adapted from Martin Andersen Nexø's monumental four-volume novel of the same name (a foundational text of Danish proletarian literature, published between 1906 and 1910) the film concentrates on the first volume, the boyhood years.

Max von Sydow plays the ageing Swedish farmhand Lasse Karlsson and the role earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, only the second time a non-English-language performance had been recognised in that category. Pelle Hvenegaard, then twelve, was cast in the title role after a national casting search; the film made his name and remains his most famous credit. The cinematography is by Jörgen Persson, the longtime Bo Widerberg collaborator, working in the cold pewter light of the Bornholm coast.

The film sits in the canon as one of the high-water marks of 1980s Nordic cinema, alongside the work of Jan Troell and the late Ingmar Bergman. August would go on to win a second Palme in 1992 (making him one of only nine directors to win the prize twice) and to direct Bergman's screenplay The Best Intentions. Pelle remains the film he is most identified with, and a fixed reference point for any literary adaptation in Danish.