The Promised Land

Nikolaj Arcel's The Promised Land (Danish: Bastarden, literally The Bastard) competed for the Golden Lion at the 80th Venice International Film Festival in 2023 and won the Bodil for Best Film at the 2024 Danish national film awards. It was selected as Denmark's official submission for the 96th Academy Awards in the Best International Feature Film category, although it was not nominated.

The film is adapted from Ida Jessen's 2020 novel The Captain and Ann Barbara, which had drawn on the actual eighteenth-century history of Ludvig Kahlen, a Danish military veteran who attempted in 1755 to cultivate the empty Jutland heath under a royal patent. The Kahlen story is studied in Danish historical scholarship as one of the first systematic land-reclamation projects in European agrarian history; the Danish parliament's Heath Society (Det Danske Hedeselskab) eventually completed the broader reclamation across the 1860s.

The cast is led by Mads Mikkelsen, Arcel had worked with Mikkelsen previously on A Royal Affair in 2012, which had also been Denmark's Oscar submission and a Cannes Best Screenplay winner. The supporting cast includes Amanda Collin (lead of Ridley Scott's Raised by Wolves), Simon Bennebjerg, Kristine Kujath Thorp, Gustav Lindh and the breakthrough child performance of Melina Hagberg. Cinematography is by Rasmus Videbæk and the score is by Dan Romer. The Danish production was financed in part by Magnolia Pictures for the U.S. market and became one of the most-discussed Scandinavian art-cinema releases of the 2023-2024 season.