Just because your last name is Trier and you happen to be from Denmark, doesn’t mean that you have a free-pass into the film industry. Joachim Trier is in fact a distant relative of the ambitious and illustrious director and inventor of Dogme95, Lars von Trier (Dogville, Breaking the Waves), but this Norwegian-Danish filmmaker has built his cinematic success without such assistance.
Trier started out at The European Film College in Denmark, quickly moving on to the National Film & Television School in Beaconsfield, England. The helmer made some noise in the film world with the short Still in 2001, which traveled heavily throughout the festival circuit. But it was his next short, Proctor, which made an even bigger impression on the festival scene, winning a multitude of awards, among them Best Short at the Edinburgh Film Festival and a nomination for best European Short at the European Film Awards.
The helmer’s feature debut, Reprise, is finally being released to limited theaters today, after making its world premier in a festival in the Czech Republic way back in July of 2006, followed by its release in Noway in September of that year. The pic played at Sundance in 2007 and was picked up by Miramax Films.
Reprise, starring newcomers Anders Danielsen Lie as Philip and Espen Klouman-Hoiner as Erik, tells the tale of two competitive, young, cocky writer friends whose separate attempts into literary fame take them in very different directions. The film, co-written by Trier and Eskil Vogt, has already won a plethora of awards across the festival circuit. The film has been described as both smart and entertaining, comprising of romance, comedy, drama and tragedy- essentially, the qualities of life.
Check out a commercial the helmer did for the Norwegian savings bank, Sparebank 1, titled “Reversed Life.” Although the voiceover is not in English, the title pretty much explains everything. Joachim’s penchant for presenting “the examined life,” as is such with Reprise, is clearly transfered through the simple, yet moving scenes displayed in the commercial.
