"Et gensyn" ("Second Encounters") is part II of a trilogy of short films. The idea first came to me in 2011, when I wrote "The Day We Met"("Da vi mødtes") as one of my screenplay assignments at the London Film School. It was based around an actual "meet-cute" I had with an ex-boyfriend, mingled with my observations of what divorce does to individuals and families. There is so much pain between the spouses, but both parties try to hide it - from each other and from the children. There's a powerful sense of having been wronged, of being victimised, and so the blame is passed around generously. Just because divorce is very common - I think more than 50% of children are now part of broken families here in Denmark - doesn't mean a nasty divorce is not heart-rending, soul-crushing and utterly destructive to everyone in the family. Then there's the aftermath. The dread of rejoining the ranks of singledom. The pressure to find someone new and better. In this story the wife does not find find someone new or better, but the husband does. Oh, the horror.

"Sweethearts" was inspired by actual events that occurred in my early teenage years. I was sitting alone in a class room one afternoon, when a boy, whom I had always feared, enters. The boy had been a terrible bully when we were younger. He used to reduce me to tears and I was afraid of him. In later years, he no longer bullied me, but instead he just ignored me and never spoke to me.  After he entered, much to my dismay, he drifted around the room aimlessly, until finally he burst out with the question: Would I go steady with him? "Komme sammen" as we say in Danish. At least that's what we said in those days. I suspect the term is rather passé today. Anyway, I was shocked and spent the next half hour trying to figure out how to turn him down without angering him - in case he would take to bullying again - and I came up with excuses like my mother didn't let me date (which wasn't untrue). He would not readily take no for an answer, and kept coming at the matter from different angles. In the end, the whole thing became rather awkward, but I did manage to turn the poor guy down. In hindsight, I'm struck at how I never even contemplated whether I might like him and take him up on his offer. I couldn't see past the fact that he had been my childhood nemesis. It seemed like a terrible trick, and I kept waiting for the other penny to drop. It never did. The guy really did like me. The whole situation was so surreal that I subsequently blocked it from my memory for the remainder of my teenage years. It wasn't until I was graduating high school that the memory suddenly returned to me. I'm glad it did, because it gave me the premise for "Sweethearts?"

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"Et gensyn" ("Second Encounters") is not inspired by any auto-biographical events, only by the questions that have plagued all os us during the immediate aftermath of a painful break-up. What if we could get a second chance? What if he (or she) could fall in love with me again? What actually went wrong? Maybe after a little while, we'll meet again, and things will be just as they were when they were good. There are two possible outcomes. Either the past cannot be repeated. There's usually a good reason why it didn't work out the first time.Or, given enough time, people reconnect - when they're wiser and older and more mature. I'm going to be coy and tell you to watch the film (there's a link above) to find out whether Katja and Simon are the former or latter types.

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I've come close to getting funding for the remaining two shorts a few times now. Close, but no cigar. I haven't given up on the idea that one day I will have a completed trilogy in my hands. I'm not really interested in doing more short films - EXCEPT for these two. There's a time and place and season for everything. Some day, they will happen.

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Below you will find more information about the trilogy, including sources of inspiration, my intention/vision, moodboards, teasers and the full screenplays.

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Thanks for reading,

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