In Camilla Magid’s ‘Fighting Demons With Dragons,’ Teenagers Battle Adulthood Anxieties With Educational Roleplay
11.03.2024 - 21:21
/ variety.com
Savina Petkova “Mistrivsel” is a Danish word that roughly translates as depression, and its use has proliferated in recent year, especially when talking about young people. Instead of asking why that is, Copenhagen-born director Camilla Magid decided to document how one institution is coming up with alternative remedies for that dark state of mind.
“Fighting Demons With Dragons” follows three students at Østerskov Boarding School in Northern Denmark, one of the few places using live action role play (LARP) as an educational method. “Looking back, almost everything I’ve ever made has always been about the outsider figure,” says Magid, speaking with Variety ahead of the film’s world premiere in Thessaloniki Documentary Festival’s Newcomers Competition.
She sees the longing to belong as a universal theme underpinning her previous works, even more politically so in “Land of the Free,” a documentary about former prisoners after their release, which won the Nordic competition at CPH:DOX in 2017. Heidi Elise Christensen of Final Cut for Real serves as producer for these two titles, in addition to her involvement in last year’s Thessaloniki winner, “A House Made of Splinters.” Kerstin Übelacker of We Have a Plan and Lisa Nyed of Film i Skåne co-produce Magid’s latest from the Swedish side.
While the original plan was to film a single student for one year, “Fighting Demons With Dragons” ended up documenting two years (including lockdown) in the life of three teenagers—Josefine, Ask, and Luca—to avoid overwhelming either one of them alone. As a result, three individual Østerskov journeys expand on an issue of a larger scale.
The website popstar.one is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can
send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.