The Girl With the Needle

Magnus von Horn's The Girl With the Needle (Danish: Pigen med nålen) competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2024 and was among the most discussed European releases of the year. Denmark submitted it for Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards, and it made the December 2024 shortlist of fifteen before missing the final five.

The story draws loosely on the case of Dagmar Overbye, a Danish woman convicted in 1921 of multiple murders connected to an illegal child-care service she ran in Copenhagen during and immediately after the First World War. Few cases in Danish criminal history have been studied so closely; it has prompted academic monographs and a handful of earlier dramatic treatments. Von Horn's screenplay, co-written with Line Langebek, follows a fictional young woman drawn into Overbye's circle and keeps Overbye herself to one side.

Michał Dymek, who had shot von Horn's earlier Sweat, photographed it in 35mm black-and-white, and the look has drawn frequent comparisons with Carl Theodor Dreyer's Day of Wrath and early Bergman. Vic Carmen Sonne leads the cast, with Trine Dyrholm in a major supporting role and a breakthrough turn from Besir Zeciri. Von Horn, Swedish-born but Danish-trained, worked mainly in Polish-language productions through the 2010s. The Girl With the Needle is his first Danish-language feature, and the one that put him among the major Nordic art-cinema directors of his generation.