The Danish Woman

The Danish Woman is Benedikt Erlingsson's first scripted television series. The Icelandic director's features include Of Horses and Men (2013) and Woman at War (2018), which won the European Parliament's Lux Prize in 2018. The series, an Icelandic-French production, was selected for the International Panorama at Series Mania in Lille in 2025, the most important industry event in European television.

Trine Dyrholm, one of Scandinavia's most accomplished screen actors, plays Ditte Jensen, newly retired from the Danish Secret Service, who moves into a Reykjavík apartment building and cannot stop meddling in her neighbours' lives. She won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlinale in 2016 for The Commune and has worked extensively with Thomas Vinterberg, Lone Scherfig and Susanne Bier. Around her are the Icelandic actors Hilmar Guðjónsson and Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, with the Danish actor Jens Albinus.

It was shot in Reykjavík and Copenhagen in spring 2024 by Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson, Erlingsson's longtime cinematographer from the earlier features. Erlingsson has talked openly in interviews about how hard it is to move from feature direction to serialised television, and the production deliberately keeps a feature-film look: the six forty-seven-minute episodes were shot largely in long takes and on location, avoiding the cheaper studio mode that most Nordic broadcasters prefer. All3Media International acquired the international distribution rights ahead of the premiere.