Flemming Nordkrog DENMARK

HARPA winner 2021 for his score for Matias Mariani's (BR) ’Shine Your Eyes’
​Flemming Nordkrog has created a bold, moving and inventive score, which excellently carries the mysterious twist and turns of the story in Matias Mariani's pensive French/Brasilian drama.

The extensive use of melancholy woodwind, with additions of ambient guitar, vocals and percussion, and even whispered spoken word, are unusual choices of orchestration, and effectively creates a synergy with the strongly architechtural character of the images, hinting at both futuristic modernism and magic realism.

At times the music becomes one with the bustling, labyrinthic metropolis of Sao Paolo, at others it comes to the forefront, carrying us further into the world of the protagonist, who is trapped between duty to his family far away, a convoluted pseudo-scientific search for his lost brother, and his desire for a new life.
The complexity of the plot is playfully conveyed by the score, which never fails to stir our emotions and curiosity, and builds the tension in perfect symbiosis with the story and images.

A classy score which is at once meditative and thought-provoking.

Danish jury:
Lone Scherfig | film director
Ida Rud Nielsen | film critic and journalist
Morten Groth Brandt | sound editor  
Flemming Nordkrog is a Danish composer based in France. 
In 1996 at the age of 23 he fell completely in love with composing for films, when he scored his first projects for the The National Film School of Denmark.
 
In 2002, Nikolaj Arcel's graduation film "Woyzeck's Last Symphony” brought him to France, where he started out working on short films. In 2003/2004, he scored his first three Danish feature films, including "King's Game" by Nikolaj Arcel. Over the years, he has created music for more than 25 feature films, and numerous TV-series, documentaries, TV-movies and short films in Denmark, France, Belgium, Brazil and the US.

Lately he has completed the scores for the highly acclaimed TV-series “Follow the Money III” (Denmark), the new series for Arte, “Moloch” (France), and the French film “Ogre”, by Arnaud Malherbe.
Among his later productions you also find the French/Tunesian feature film “Arab Blues” (2020) by Manele Labidi, and the Brazilian “Shine Your Eyes” by Matias Mariani, which was premiered at the Berlinale 2020 in the Panorama section.

One of his most important on-going collaborations is with the French director, Philippe Lioret, with whom he’s currently working on their 4th film together, the French drama “16 ans”. Their earlier films include "Toutes nos envies”, for which Flemming received both the "Harry Warren Award", awarded by the Italian Academy "Sonora" and a "Special Prize of the Senate of the Italian Republic”.

In 2010, he was nominated for the HARPA-award for the Danish feature film "Velsignelsen" (The Blessing) by Heidi Maria Faisst, which premiered at the Göteborg Film Festival. He also wrote the music for the two Oscar-awarded shorts, Martin Strange-Hansen’s “This Charming Man” and Philippe Pollet-Villard’s “The Mozart of Pickpockets".
 
Other important collaborations would include : Max Kestner, Erick Zonca, Mathias Gokalp, Mathieu Vadepied, Kaspar Munk, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, Hella Joof, Søren Balle, Vibeke Muasya and Mikkel Munch-Fals.

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