Susanne Bier

Directing

Susanne Bier

Born 1960-04-15 · Copenhagen, Denmark

Susanne Bier (Danish: [suˈsænə ˈpiɐ̯ˀ]; born 15 April 1960) is a Danish filmmaker. Bier is the first female director to collectively receive an Academy Award (Foreign Film), a Golden Globe Award, a European Film Award (for In a Better World) and a Primetime Emmy Award (for directing The Night Manager). Bier debuted her feature film with Freud's Leaving Home (1991). She directed a string of films, including Open Hearts (2002), Brothers (2004), After the Wedding(2006), and In a Better World (2010), the later of which earned the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. She directed the English-language films Things We Lost in the Fire (2007), Love Is All You Need (2012), Serena (2014), and Bird Box(2018). She directed the BBC One / AMC miniseries The Night Manager (2016) on television, earning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. She also directed the HBO psychological miniseries The Undoing (2020), the Showtime historical anthology series The First Lady (2022), and the Netflix mystery series, The Perfect Couple (2024). Description above from the Wikipedia article Susanne Bier, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Practical Magic 2 poster
6.2

The Owens sisters must confront the dark curse that threatens to unravel their family once and for all.

Practical Magic 2

2026

Bird Box poster
6.8

Five years after an ominous unseen presence drives most of society to suicide, a survivor and her two children make a desperate bid to reach safety.

Bird Box

2018

Brothers poster
7.3

When his helicopter goes down during his fourth tour of duty in Afghanistan, Marine Sam Cahill is presumed dead. Back home, brother Tommy steps in to look over Sam’s wife, Grace, and two children. Sam’s surprise homecoming triggers domestic mayhem.

Brothers

2009

Serena poster
5.6

North Carolina mountains at the end of the 1920s – George and Serena Pemberton, love-struck newly-weds, begin to build a timber empire. Serena soon proves herself to be equal to any man: overseeing loggers, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. With power and influence now in their hands, the Pembertons refuse to let anyone stand in the way of their inflated love and ambitions. However, once Serena discovers George’s hidden past and faces an unchangeable fate of her own, the Pemberton’s passionate marriage begins to unravel leading toward a dramatic reckoning.

Serena

2014

Serena poster
5.6

North Carolina mountains at the end of the 1920s – George and Serena Pemberton, love-struck newly-weds, begin to build a timber empire. Serena soon proves herself to be equal to any man: overseeing loggers, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. With power and influence now in their hands, the Pembertons refuse to let anyone stand in the way of their inflated love and ambitions. However, once Serena discovers George’s hidden past and faces an unchangeable fate of her own, the Pemberton’s passionate marriage begins to unravel leading toward a dramatic reckoning.

Serena

2014

Love Is All You Need poster
6.0

Ida, a Danish hairdresser who has lost her hair to cancer, returns home from the hospital one day to find her husband is cheating on her. She decides to travel to Italy on her own for her daughter's wedding, but discovers on arriving that the wedding gathering will present its own challenges.

Love Is All You Need

2012

Open Hearts poster
7.1

Cecilie and Joachim are about to get married when a freak car accident leaves Joachim disabled, throwing their lives into a spin. The driver of the other car, Marie, and her family don’t get off lightly, either. Her husband Niels works in the hospital where he meets Cecilie and falls madly in love with her.

Open Hearts

2002

Things We Lost in the Fire poster
6.6

A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.

Things We Lost in the Fire

2007

After the Wedding poster
7.1

A manager of an orphanage in India is sent to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he discovers a life-altering family secret.

After the Wedding

2006

In a Better World poster
7.2

The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.

In a Better World

2010

A Second Chance poster
6.6

Detectives and best friends Andreas and Simon lead vastly different lives; Andreas has settled down with his beautiful wife and son; while Simon, recently divorced, spends most of his waking hours getting drunk at the local strip club. But all that changes when the two of them are called out to a domestic dispute between a junkie couple, caught in a vicious cycle of violence and drugs. It all looks very routine – until Andreas finds the couple's infant son, crying in a closet. The usually collected policeman finds himself confronted with his own powerlessness and is shaken to his core. As Andreas slowly loses his grip on justice, it suddenly becomes up to the unruly Simon to restore the balance between right and wrong.

A Second Chance

2014

Brothers poster
6.8

A Danish officer, Michael, is sent away to the International Security Assistance Force operation in Afghanistan for three months. His first mission there is to find a young radar technician who had been separated from his squad some days earlier. While on the search, his helicopter is shot down and he is taken as a prisoner of war, but is reported dead to the family.

Brothers

2004

Brothers poster
6.8

A Danish officer, Michael, is sent away to the International Security Assistance Force operation in Afghanistan for three months. His first mission there is to find a young radar technician who had been separated from his squad some days earlier. While on the search, his helicopter is shot down and he is taken as a prisoner of war, but is reported dead to the family.

Brothers

2004

Credo poster
6.8

Mona is a young woman, engaged to a man who never shows up. She relies strongly on her supportive friend, Anne. Mona suspects that Anne's psychologist, Dr. Lark, is acting funny towards her friend, and decides to investigate. Mona and Anne will find themselves embroiled in a strange world of psychiatry and fanaticism, in which both young women's lives will be endangered.

Credo

1997

Credo poster
6.8

Mona is a young woman, engaged to a man who never shows up. She relies strongly on her supportive friend, Anne. Mona suspects that Anne's psychologist, Dr. Lark, is acting funny towards her friend, and decides to investigate. Mona and Anne will find themselves embroiled in a strange world of psychiatry and fanaticism, in which both young women's lives will be endangered.

Credo

1997

Once in a Lifetime poster
4.5

Mona Bergström is a sweet eurovision-obsessed woman in her 30s. She is married to a lazy husband and has four children, all named after her favorite Swedish Eurovision popstars. Her brother is a crossdressing guy self-titled "Candy Darling". Mona works in a retirement home for disabled people, where she is responsible for taking care of a young man named David who suffers a movement-restricting disease forcing him into a wheelchair. David's parents have abandoned him, as they wanted a normal child. Mona holds a big place in David's heart, and vica versa. David's goal is to get his parents to come and visit him, and he wants to show them that he is a great person, despite his handicap. Therefore he works with music on his computer, and his goal is to create a song, send it to "The Cardigans", a famous Swedish band and have them play the song and credit him, hoping his parents would spot it and want to visit him.

Once in a Lifetime

2000

The One and Only poster
6.5

When kitchen fitter Niller comes to install Sus's new suite, their immediate attraction to one another proves a sweet escape from both of their problematic relationships.

The One and Only

1999

Freud Leaving Home poster
4.8

In this story, the 60th birthday of Cohen-family matriarch Rosha is the occasion for a gathering of her children from the diverse places around the world. The central character in this drama, however, is Angelique, whose interest in psychoanalysis has earned her the nickname of "Freud." Her older brother is gay and lives in Florida with his lover. Her older sister has married into an Orthodox family, and lives in Jerusalem. They have all gathered in Sweden for their grandmother's birthday. Meanwhile, Rosha's daughter, the mother of these diverse children, has taken ill and is in the hospital. She has been diagnosed with a very advanced, inoperable brain tumor. Freud, who never left home, is perhaps as upset by this news as anyone, and she startles everyone by going out and beginning an affair with a biker. However, she is deeply involved in the new situation: she insists that their mother be brought home from the hospital rather than being allowed to suffer and die there.

Freud Leaving Home

1991

Family Matters poster
3.5

Jan thinks he is Swedish-Danish, but after his mother's death he discovers he was adopted. As his world begins to fall apart, he decides to find his birth parents. The hunt leads him to Portugal - in a taxi - where more surprises await him.

Family Matters

1993

No artwork available
8.0

Camilla and Louise are digging in the desert sand of Israel. They are looking for relics of the past, but while doing so, self-deception and life-lies appear. This mars their conception of life and shakes their relationship.

Letter to Jonas

1992

Like It Never Was Before poster
5.4

The Runeberg family is an ordinary middle class family, with a house in a suburb, a car and three children. By vacationing in a rented house by the sea, the hope is that the tension and anxiety between Rune and Gunnel will disappear. However, instead of spending time with his family, Rune finds himself attracted to a young man, Petrus. Whatever happens next, Rune realizes, it can never be like it was before.

Like It Never Was Before

1995