The 6x30’ TV show in pre-production is produced by Helle Faber of Made in Copenhagen for TV2 Denmark. TV2 Fiction’s Maj-Britt Landin is exec producer.

The series was pitched yesterday by Faber and director Mads Matthiesen (Teddy Bear, The Model) at Berlin’s Drama Series Days, just a few days after REinvent Studios picked it up for world distribution.

The Rebels from No 69 will be the first TV drama for Matthiesen and Faber who first met on the red carpet at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012 where Matthiesen scooped Best Director-World Competition for the film Teddy Bear, while Faber’s documentary Putin’s Kiss won Best Cinematography.  The series is a passion-project for them as well as for writer Jesper Fink (Before the Frost) and co-writer Johanne Algren (Holiday).

The series is inspired by the real events that shook Copenhagen in 2007, when a group of young squatters were forced to evacuate the historic cultural centre ‘Ungdomshuset’ or ‘Youth House’ at Jagtvej 69, Nørrebro, provoking street riots and leading to 650 arrests. A meeting point for local left-wing anarchists and punk rockers between 1982 -2007, Ungdomshuset was a major cultural venue for Copenhagen’s underground scene that also hosted top international singers and musicians such as Björk and Nick Cave. But when the building was sold to a Christian sect, squatters were removed by police forces and violent confrontations erupted with the radicalised youths, supported by sympathisers from the US and all over Europe.

Speaking to nordicfilmandtvnews.com, Matthiesen who himself used to play music and hang out at Ungdomshuset in the 1990s says the events had a big social-political impact in the Danish capital at the time. 

Helle Faber adds: “Mads, but also the scriptwriters Johanne and Jesper have a personal connection to Ungdomshuset. Therefore we will tell the story as truly and authentically as possible." The fiction series will use archive material and will be based on thorough research and interviews with some of the former squatters who provided an invaluable insight on how the events unfolded in 2007.

The Rebels from No 69 will focus on a young girl, Camilla, who arrives in Copenhagen from the country and falls for a female and a male squatter  part of Ungdomshuset’s community. The show will follow them from inside the house during half a year, as the police tries to evict them. Camilla will be forced to choose between the two characters, one peaceful and the other radicalised and violent. “The show will be shot entirely from their point of view,” stresses Matthiesen, who intends to hire new acting talent aged between 16-25, next to well-known actors.

Visually, the director says he will use a ‘gritty grainy realistic style’, and make full use of the punk rock music scene of the time.

For Faber, the show will be both local and universal, as it will depict the rise of radicalisation among white middle-class youngsters. “It will break the prejudice about radicalisation, too often associated to Muslim communities,” she adds.

For Helene Aurø, REinvent Studios Director of Sales & Marketing, the show has an international appeal as “it’s about being young, and being radicalised.” The TV2 Fiction series has received support from the Danish Film Institute.

Filming is set to start in the fall 2019.