Bille August - biography

“He considers the theatrical version of Fanny and Alexander an amputated version of what his original film was, and he doesn’t really like the shorter film.”

“I was mostly interested in it as a theatrical film.  Personally, I am not so interested in television, simply because I don’t watch television myself.  I’m into movies.”

“It was actually Peter’s idea that I should make the film.  He called me in the very beginning, and I hadn’t even read the book.  So I read it and I liked it very much and I knew I’d certainly like to do it.”

“She is also brought to a point of zero in the beginning of the story, and I think you can say that about a lot of my films in that they are often about people who are brought to the point of zero in the beginning of the film.”

“It was a major dream come true at last.  In many respects, Jerusalem is a very modern and important story about people in a period of transition, with all the unrest that permeates society on the eve of a new century.  The big life issues are at stake.”

“I wanted to make Jerusalem as feature film.  But we couldn’t finance it only through theatrical release, we couldn’t get all the money we needed.  We had to get some money from television.  So we said, ok, let’s do it both ways.  So we did it in four parts.”

“I spent almost 3 months with Bergman, four hours every afternoon.  We sat and went through the whole script.  To be honest, most of the time we talked about life and other different things.  It was really a wonderful time.”

“From the beginning, we were prepared, we know how we would shoot and cut the two versions.”

“The big difference is the size of the crew and the flexibility of shooting because of the size.  I mean, it’s crazy.  So you can’t improvise, you cannot suddenly do something that comes to mind, whereas in a small production you have much more flexibility.”

“The novel is a penetrating study of morals and ethics.”

“We talked a lot about The Best Intentions and how we could shoot certain scenes in different ways with slightly different bits of dialogue and information, so that later on, we could cut the piece more easily and it would still feel complete, even though it was shorter.”

Bille August directed the following films:
The House of the Spirits (1993)
Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (1997)
Return to Sender (2004)
Chacun son cinéma (2007)
Goodbye Bafana (2007)


Bille August contributed to the screenplay for the following films:
Return to Sender (2004)
Goodbye Bafana (2007)