Jon Bang Carlsen

Directing

Jon Bang Carlsen

Born

1950-09-28 (76)

Place of birth

Vedbæk, Denmark

Known for

Directing

Credits

49 titles

Jon Bang Carlsen is a Danish filmmaker, director, screenwriter, producer, actor, photographer and author. In the drama/documentary "Déjà Vu" (2016) he depicts parts of his life and his filmmaking.

Known for

The Element of Crime poster
6.4

Fisher, an ex-detective, decides to take one final case when a mysterious serial killer claims the lives of several young girls. Fisher, unable to find the culprit, turns to Osbourne, a writer who was once respected for his contributions to the field of criminology. Fisher begins to use Osbourne's technique, which involves empathizing with serial killers; however, as the detective becomes increasingly engrossed in this method, things take a disturbing turn.

The Element of Crime

1984

The Boys from St. Petri poster
6.5

A group of school-mates form a resistance group in nazi-occupied Denmark.

The Boys from St. Petri

1991

It's Now or Never poster
8.0

On the windswept planes of the Burren, fifty-something bachelor Jimmy McEvoy spends his days constructing dry stone walls and waiting for a call from the matchmaker, as he muses on life and love.

It's Now or Never

1996

No artwork available
9.5

It has hardly been seen before that a 83-year-old actor has starred in a Danish film, but it is the case here, where Kai Holm says goodbye to a long life in film and theater service. He plays an old peasant who on his deathbed is waiting for his son (Jon Bang Carlsen). In a few days he relives the village life, he comes from, and which was marked by a hard and authoritarian upbringing. He is at his father's deathbed despair because it is still impossible to make contact, and in a crisis situation, he recognizes his father's brutality in itself. The film draws a bitter picture of human relationships where dreams while they die, degenerates into power relations.

Dreams Don't Make Noise When They Die

1979

No artwork available
6.7

Clemens has escaped from prison. The first thing he does is seek out his wife Maria. He dreams of the two of them traveling away, but Maria does not want to. In the end, he leaves using his friend's passport.

Achilleshælen er mit våben

1979

Baby Doll poster
6.7

A young woman goes on a vacation at an old farm, which once belonged to her deceased grandmother. Childhood traumas and the memories of her strict and authoritarian grandmother haunts the young woman and leads her to scary delusions and a mental breakdown.

Baby Doll

1988

Film credits

2010s · 2 titles

1990s · 3 titles

1970s · 2 titles

Behind the camera

It's Now or Never poster
8.0

On the windswept planes of the Burren, fifty-something bachelor Jimmy McEvoy spends his days constructing dry stone walls and waiting for a call from the matchmaker, as he muses on life and love.

It's Now or Never

1996

It's Now or Never poster
8.0

On the windswept planes of the Burren, fifty-something bachelor Jimmy McEvoy spends his days constructing dry stone walls and waiting for a call from the matchmaker, as he muses on life and love.

It's Now or Never

1996

It's Now or Never poster
8.0

On the windswept planes of the Burren, fifty-something bachelor Jimmy McEvoy spends his days constructing dry stone walls and waiting for a call from the matchmaker, as he muses on life and love.

It's Now or Never

1996

Baby Doll poster
6.7

A young woman goes on a vacation at an old farm, which once belonged to her deceased grandmother. Childhood traumas and the memories of her strict and authoritarian grandmother haunts the young woman and leads her to scary delusions and a mental breakdown.

Baby Doll

1988

Carmen & Babyface poster
5.2

Set in 1962 during the Berlin crisis, the contented lifestyle of Carmen and her kid brother, whom she's nicknamed Babyface, comes to an abrupt end when their parents acrimoniously separate.

Carmen & Babyface

1995

Carmen & Babyface poster
5.2

Set in 1962 during the Berlin crisis, the contented lifestyle of Carmen and her kid brother, whom she's nicknamed Babyface, comes to an abrupt end when their parents acrimoniously separate.

Carmen & Babyface

1995

Ophelia Comes to Town poster
9.0

During a production of "Hamlet", the withdrawn lead actor and the girl playing Ophelia, who has just escaped a life of drugs and prostitution, spark an unlikely and low-key romance.

Ophelia Comes to Town

1985

Ophelia Comes to Town poster
9.0

During a production of "Hamlet", the withdrawn lead actor and the girl playing Ophelia, who has just escaped a life of drugs and prostitution, spark an unlikely and low-key romance.

Ophelia Comes to Town

1985

Time Out poster
3.3

Drama about a young Dane who has traveled to America to find the father he can hardly remember. In New Mexico he gets to know the daughter of a political-religious fanatic who runs a "survival school". The young Dane is interested in the girl and admits to school. Later, however, there will be a violent showdown with the fanatic. But was this man, in fact, his father?

Time Out

1988

Time Out poster
3.3

Drama about a young Dane who has traveled to America to find the father he can hardly remember. In New Mexico he gets to know the daughter of a political-religious fanatic who runs a "survival school". The young Dane is interested in the girl and admits to school. Later, however, there will be a violent showdown with the fanatic. But was this man, in fact, his father?

Time Out

1988

Déjà vu poster
NR

To what extent does a director stay objective and anonymously hidden behind the camera? The Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen knows for sure that the choices he makes in his films aren’t accidental. Several excerpts from his own work show that events in his personal life have a major influence on his work. In fact, he appears to be using images that he recognizes in particular. It’s a revelation for this filmmaker, who used to think he could stay objective and invisible. Topics such as doubting his faith, his runaway father and impressions from a carefree childhood are recurring themes in his diverse oeuvre. Showing us individual scenes, Carlsen comments in voice-over on the images and muses about his life and work.

Déjà vu

2015

Déjà vu poster
NR

To what extent does a director stay objective and anonymously hidden behind the camera? The Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen knows for sure that the choices he makes in his films aren’t accidental. Several excerpts from his own work show that events in his personal life have a major influence on his work. In fact, he appears to be using images that he recognizes in particular. It’s a revelation for this filmmaker, who used to think he could stay objective and invisible. Topics such as doubting his faith, his runaway father and impressions from a carefree childhood are recurring themes in his diverse oeuvre. Showing us individual scenes, Carlsen comments in voice-over on the images and muses about his life and work.

Déjà vu

2015

Déjà vu poster
NR

To what extent does a director stay objective and anonymously hidden behind the camera? The Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen knows for sure that the choices he makes in his films aren’t accidental. Several excerpts from his own work show that events in his personal life have a major influence on his work. In fact, he appears to be using images that he recognizes in particular. It’s a revelation for this filmmaker, who used to think he could stay objective and invisible. Topics such as doubting his faith, his runaway father and impressions from a carefree childhood are recurring themes in his diverse oeuvre. Showing us individual scenes, Carlsen comments in voice-over on the images and muses about his life and work.

Déjà vu

2015

Cats in Riga poster
NR

While current events are being discussed in the news and the residents of Riga are plagued by their everyday worries, cats are fully occupied with aimlessly wandering around staircases, offices, and apartments, completely indifferent to the absurd hustle and bustle of our civilization. This clever pseudo-documentary play on words comments on the role of subjectivity in our perception of the world around us.

Cats in Riga

2015

Cats in Riga poster
NR

While current events are being discussed in the news and the residents of Riga are plagued by their everyday worries, cats are fully occupied with aimlessly wandering around staircases, offices, and apartments, completely indifferent to the absurd hustle and bustle of our civilization. This clever pseudo-documentary play on words comments on the role of subjectivity in our perception of the world around us.

Cats in Riga

2015

How to Invent Reality poster
NR

Jon Bang Carlsen's essay about his way of approaching reality with a camera. Following the filming of "It's Now or Never", the story of an Irish bachelor's quest for love, Jon Bang Carlsen elaborates on how he manipulates reality in order to get to the core of it. " Staged documentary " he calls his method.

How to Invent Reality

1996

How to Invent Reality poster
NR

Jon Bang Carlsen's essay about his way of approaching reality with a camera. Following the filming of "It's Now or Never", the story of an Irish bachelor's quest for love, Jon Bang Carlsen elaborates on how he manipulates reality in order to get to the core of it. " Staged documentary " he calls his method.

How to Invent Reality

1996

How to Invent Reality poster
NR

Jon Bang Carlsen's essay about his way of approaching reality with a camera. Following the filming of "It's Now or Never", the story of an Irish bachelor's quest for love, Jon Bang Carlsen elaborates on how he manipulates reality in order to get to the core of it. " Staged documentary " he calls his method.

How to Invent Reality

1996

Over the Roads, Over the River poster
NR

Seven versions of Riga, the city on the Baltic Sea, and its features as seen by outstanding European film directors: Sergei Loznitsa (The Old Jewish Cemetery), Ivars Seleckis (On Ķīpsala), Audrius Stonys (Riga Boats), Jaak Kilmi (Littering Prohibited!), Jon Bang Karlsen (Cats in Riga), Rainer Komers (Daugava Delta), and Bettina Henkel (Theatre Street 6).

Over the Roads, Over the River

2014

Lovely Is the Blue Sky poster
7.0

In the lead-up to Christmas 1974, an army of about seventy Santa Clauses, male and female, paraded through the city of Copenhagen, singing carols, handing out sweets and hot chocolate, and asking everyone what they wanted for Christmas. After spending a few days cementing the good image of Santa Claus, their generosity became increasingly radical. Among other things, the Santas climbed a barbed wire fence surrounding the recently shutte red General Motors assembly plant with the purpose of giving jobs back to “their rightful owners.” The week-long performance reached its crescendo inside one of Copenhagen’s biggest department stores when the Santas started handing out presents to customers directly off the shelves. The performance exposed the radical implications of the myth of Santa Claus’ boundless generosity, demonstrating that true generosity is impossible within the narrow terms of capitalist society.

Lovely Is the Blue Sky

1975

Lovely Is the Blue Sky poster
7.0

In the lead-up to Christmas 1974, an army of about seventy Santa Clauses, male and female, paraded through the city of Copenhagen, singing carols, handing out sweets and hot chocolate, and asking everyone what they wanted for Christmas. After spending a few days cementing the good image of Santa Claus, their generosity became increasingly radical. Among other things, the Santas climbed a barbed wire fence surrounding the recently shutte red General Motors assembly plant with the purpose of giving jobs back to “their rightful owners.” The week-long performance reached its crescendo inside one of Copenhagen’s biggest department stores when the Santas started handing out presents to customers directly off the shelves. The performance exposed the radical implications of the myth of Santa Claus’ boundless generosity, demonstrating that true generosity is impossible within the narrow terms of capitalist society.

Lovely Is the Blue Sky

1975

Addicted to Solitude poster
6.5

I traveled to South Africa to find a white family living on a desolate farm. I wanted to film how they faced the new days of equality after the fall of Apartheid. But I soon lost my way both on the endless roads and in my way. Instead, the film became a story about two very different women who both experienced a tragic loss in the midst of a white community not too fond of the future.

Addicted to Solitude

1999

Addicted to Solitude poster
6.5

I traveled to South Africa to find a white family living on a desolate farm. I wanted to film how they faced the new days of equality after the fall of Apartheid. But I soon lost my way both on the endless roads and in my way. Instead, the film became a story about two very different women who both experienced a tragic loss in the midst of a white community not too fond of the future.

Addicted to Solitude

1999

No artwork available
NR

In his new feature film Jon Bang Carlsen inserts the viewer into the affluent suburbs of Los Angeles, a world where families put on a brave face to mask the tension and turmoil at home. The kids are rebelling and the parents doesn’t know how to deal with them. With their parents consent, the children are abducted and bundled into a van which takes them to a reform school in the middle of the desert, in Utah. Blending fact with fiction, Carlsen shows us how parents sometimes achieve control by surrendering it and how fabrications can help us understand real life.

Just the Right Amount of Violence

2013

No artwork available
NR

In his new feature film Jon Bang Carlsen inserts the viewer into the affluent suburbs of Los Angeles, a world where families put on a brave face to mask the tension and turmoil at home. The kids are rebelling and the parents doesn’t know how to deal with them. With their parents consent, the children are abducted and bundled into a van which takes them to a reform school in the middle of the desert, in Utah. Blending fact with fiction, Carlsen shows us how parents sometimes achieve control by surrendering it and how fabrications can help us understand real life.

Just the Right Amount of Violence

2013

The Banality of Grief poster
NR

Since the 1970s, the travelling and extremely productive film poet Jon Bang Carlsen has created an extensive body of work with a creative and personal look at the world, with the staged documentary as his preferred form. When his beloved wife passes away, he reaches for filmmaking as a way to give his grief a form. ‘The Banality of Grief’ is a cinematic love letter to a loved one and to the places where they shared their lives for 35 years. South Africa, the USA, their shared home by the water. The boundaries between past and present end in an impressionistic and deeply personal film, where existential and artistic thoughts are countered by new impressions, which testify that life is the greatest of them all. Jon Bang Carlsen is a rare and precious figure in Danish cinema. An adventurer with an ever-recording camera, who directs his gaze outwards even when his thoughts are turned inwards.

The Banality of Grief

2021

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Yesterdays Heroes

2000

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Jeg ville først finde sandheden

1987

Dreaming Arizona poster
NR

Where does the dream begin and reality end? In Dreaming Arizona, this is the question both for the central figures and for the viewer. Known for his staged documentaries, Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen has five American teenagers from a small town in Arizona reenact their own lives—past, present and future.

Dreaming Arizona

2022

Dreaming Arizona poster
NR

Where does the dream begin and reality end? In Dreaming Arizona, this is the question both for the central figures and for the viewer. Known for his staged documentaries, Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen has five American teenagers from a small town in Arizona reenact their own lives—past, present and future.

Dreaming Arizona

2022

Dreaming Arizona poster
NR

Where does the dream begin and reality end? In Dreaming Arizona, this is the question both for the central figures and for the viewer. Known for his staged documentaries, Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen has five American teenagers from a small town in Arizona reenact their own lives—past, present and future.

Dreaming Arizona

2022

Next Stop - Paradise poster
5.8

A former army officer befriends an elderly, poorly, lady and encourages her to enjoy reminiscing about her youthful days.

Next Stop - Paradise

1980

Next Stop - Paradise poster
5.8

A former army officer befriends an elderly, poorly, lady and encourages her to enjoy reminiscing about her youthful days.

Next Stop - Paradise

1980

No artwork available
NR

Sara is a 4-year-old mentally deficient living with her parents and a little sister. Sara was never institutionalized as her parents decided that it had to be possible to live an everyday life with the child in spite of the doctors' warning that it would ruin their lives if she was not sent off to an institution.

Idiot Sara

1973

No artwork available
NR

When the Indians occupied Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1973 as a protest against the abuses of the white Americans, the Solvognen street theater organized an event in the center of Copenhagen: "Indians" were driven by "cavalrymen" towards Rådhuspladsen, where the massacre was carried out, while "Nixon" paid tribute to American democracy and a girl guard marched triumphantly over the polling station. Seven cinematographers covered this piece of street theatre.

White man's seed

1975

No artwork available
NR

Danish auteur Jon Bang Carlsen takes stock of his life's work, the art of cinema and life itself in a film that stretches from the west coast of Denmark to the red desert sands of Arizona.

The More Naked We Dare to Be

2025

No artwork available
NR

Danish auteur Jon Bang Carlsen takes stock of his life's work, the art of cinema and life itself in a film that stretches from the west coast of Denmark to the red desert sands of Arizona.

The More Naked We Dare to Be

2025

No artwork available
NR

Danish auteur Jon Bang Carlsen takes stock of his life's work, the art of cinema and life itself in a film that stretches from the west coast of Denmark to the red desert sands of Arizona.

The More Naked We Dare to Be

2025

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Ich bin auch ein Berliner

1990

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

En fisker i Hanstholm

1977