After his award-winning short “Berik” (Cannes Fest) and first feature “The Weight of Elephants” (Berlin Fest), Daniel Borgman returns to Berlin with a second feature film Loving Pia.
A work of fiction, the film is developed from the life of – and starring – a real woman, Pia, who is intellectually disabled.
Pia is 60 years old and she lives in rural Denmark in the care of her mother Guittou, 84. Guittou is getting old, and Pia worries about what will happen when her mother dies. She is afraid of being left alone. Although Pia has never had a boyfriend, she thinks that she needs to find a man to love in order to survive.
When Pia meets a man called Jens at the harbor, she embarks on a quiet and simple relationship with him, not realizing that it is her mother who is left alone.
Loving Pia stems from Borgman’s ambition to create a story based on a real person’s life and emotions. The main characters are played by Pia Skovgaard, Céline Skovgaard and Jens Jensen, whom Borgman and Adomeit found after a long casting process driving around Denmark. The film is shot in the home of Pia and her mother with no changes of the décor or any artificial lighting, and the story grew organically from spending time with the two.
“I’ve always made films about outsiders,” says Borgman. “There’s something about the able worldview that I don’t like. Or any kind of dominant perspective really. It pre-supposes a predefined way of seeing things and of communicating, and I think it’s very limiting and narrow.”
Loving Pia is the second feature film by New Zealand-born Borgman, who graduated from the alternative Danish film School Super16. His short films “Lars and Peter” (2009) and “Berik” (2010) were both selected for Cannes, the latter film winning the Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique. Borgman made his feature debut with “The Weight of Elephants” (2013), about the loneliness of childhood told through the story of 11-year-old Adrian. The film was also selected for Berlinale Forum.
Loving Pia, developed at the Berlinale Residency fellowship programme, is produced by Katja Adomeit for Adomeit Film. The film has received support from the Danish Film Institute, through commissioning editor Mikkel Munch-Fals, and the regional film fund FilmFyn.
Denmark
Running time: 100 min
Director : Daniel Borgman
Cast: Pia Skovgaard, Céline Skovgaard, Jens Jensen, Putte Jensen
Cinematography : Daniel Borgman
Produced by Katja Adomeit
Editing: Sofie Marie Kristensen, Daniel Borgman
DIRECTOR’S FILMOGRAPHY
2017 Loving Pia, 100 min, Feature Film, Denmark, Berlinale Forum 2017
2013 The Weight of Elephants, 83 min, Feature Film, Denmark/New Zealand, Berlinale Forum
2012 How to Say Goodbye, 30min, Denmark
2011 Brainy, 30 min., Denmark, Locarno FF
2011 Berik, 15min., Denmark, Winner Grand prix Award Semaine de la Critique
2010 Lars & Peter, 15 min., Denmark, Official selection Cannes Film Festival
2009 The Man & the Albatross, 24 min., Denmark, Locarno FF