Danish director Emilie Thalund is another Nordic talent to look out for. Her debut film Weightless had its UK premiere at London Film Festival this month, off the back of her winning a prize at the San Sebastián Film Festival. Nordic Watchlist’s Alex and Sarah met with the director in London to discuss her stunning debut.
Denmark always seems to produce talented directors, and it is wonderful to see that the London Film Festival continues to attract them. Last year, it was Sylvia Le Fanu’s debut, My Eternal Summer, that showcased the depth of talent the country has to offer. So to 2025 and another new talent is unearthed, with Emilie Thalund and her debut film Weightless – a project the director has been working on for more than four years.
The film centres on Leah (newcomer Marie Helweg Augustsen), who is sent off to a summer health camp to make friends and get herself fitter and healthier. There, she makes friends but also falls for one of the guides, Rune (played by Joachim Fjellstrup).
Marie Helweg Augustsen puts in a phenomenal performance as Leah, displaying this natural and open vulnerability to her character as she navigates these thoughts and feelings under the microscope of Thalund’s direction.
“It was so crucial that we found her (Marie) because she is in all the scenes and we really wanted the audience to experience the film through her POV”, the director explains. “Leah is this weird mix of being very observant but also needing to be active, so we needed to find a face that could tell a story just by looking at her.”
Marie does a wonderful job delivering this exact performance, and it is done so subtly – conveying moments of fragility and toughness as she navigates the feelings and experiences she is going through at the summer camp.
When it came to the casting process, Emilie had a great casting director onboard with her in Lena Paaske; “There were over a 100 girls who applied for the role of Sasha (the fiery room mate Leah befriends) yet for Leah there were not as many girls but we then had Marie apply for the role and I had not doubt she was the perfect fit.”
“In a way, this reflected some of the things we were trying to convey in the film and about general representation in film – this importance of seeing someone you can mirror yourself in, to dare to dream about being an actress.”
Emilie certainly succeeded in picking an actress who is able to carry the film and does it so naturally as well. We ask Emilie how she worked with Marie to gain that kind of naturalism, especially given the vulnerability of her story?
“With Marie, she was cast quite early in the process. So she had also been part of reading the scripts, doing the different drafts, and giving comments and feedback, especially because it had been many years since the writer and I were teenagers.”
On her writing team, Emilie cites the awesome work of Marianne Letz. Together they created a very trustworthy relationship with Marie, where the young actress was able to express how comfortable she felt about particular scenes.
“I think it’s interesting working with young talent because they are learning about themselves while doing it. They don’t know their own boundaries as much as older talent does. So you also need to kind of protect them,” Emilie explains, “We created this story that was about grown-ups not taking good enough care of young people. So how did we make sure not to do the same thing when we made the film? We really did a lot of work around making sure of that.”
When it comes to having further experience involved on the project – enter the extremely talented Danish star Joachim Fjelstrup. Joachim has had a huge year in 2025 with appearances in The Girl With the Needle, All and Eva, the excellent Carmen Curlers, and also a role in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein! To say that Emilie was delighted to have him on board is an understatement.
“He was the perfect match for the part. I think he’s both a very talented actor and a very warm person. So he was really good at making the young cast feel good and helping them, and also me, because it was my first time shooting a feature. He was a big supporter of that.”
Joachim plays Rune, one of the summer camp guides who expresses an interest in supporting Leah and for who Leah develops a crush off the back of his fondness for her. We all know where this might go, which plays out in the second half of the film, but the way it is handled is so delicate and devastating.
“We wanted to create this Rune character as someone that people can understand why Leah is falling in love with him, so he should be a very likeable person.”
Playing such a character cannot always be easy, and the team worked closely with Joachim. He liked the script and had questions about the character. Emilie mentions how they all did a lot of research for their characters in the film, but whereas a lot of the young girls would speak up about these kinds of situations that occurred in their experiences, there were next to no men who wanted to talk about it.
Elsewhere, what was very noticeable was the excellent camera work on the film – a blend of close-up shots that really amplified this sensitivity and openness to what’s going on with the teenagers. Working behind the camera was Louise McLaughlin.
“I loved working with Louise”, Emilie beams. “One thing we wanted this film to be was to really be on the young girl’s side, like we are experiencing with her, that we’re not just objectifying or looking at her. For me, that lies a lot in the camera work; it needs to be a little tactile. You need to feel like you can touch this, and you can almost feel the bed sheets, or whatever. So it was very much a part of it from the beginning – that it needed to feel very close.”
Amongst the close-ups of these teenagers finding themselves over the course of their stay at the summer camp, the shots also welcome the nature that the teenagers have as their backdrop.
Emilie comments on the location: “The specific place that we started in was perfect for the story because we needed a low budget, single location. It was good, but had some limitations. It’s very much based on a place I had in my mind, similar to where I’ve been to camp many times as a kid. It felt right to have a coming-of-age story taking part here, in the summer.”
“The nature reflects these young people, with their emotions and bodies that are changing. The landscape is really a part of the story as well.”
The film concludes with a beautiful piece of music that was suggested by the film’s music supervisor, Thore Garberg. When Emilie heard the track, Beautiful Women by Sarah Klang, she was shocked.
“I listened to it, and I was like, that’s too much – it’s so on the nose. So we tried it, and I was like, fuck it, we need to do it – I got so emotional listening to it. I felt like it’s so true what she’s singing, and it’s about big feelings and teenage life.”
The song plays out this wonderful and thought-provoking piece of cinema in such a beautiful way – it is almost spooky how fitting the song is to the film itself.
It seems silly to ask Emilie whether working on Weightless has given her a taste for pursuing further feature films, as it is such early days with her debut, one that has won an award at the San Sebastián Film Festival.
And the reactions so far? “So far the reactions have been really, really good. I’m still pinching myself. I really have imposter syndrome. So, just being here and now with this film, you know, it’s huge.”
And what about the audience and what they take away from the film?
“Ideally, I want people to feel seen. But I’m also very curious about whether people feel provoked or like this is not the way they would tell this story. The beautiful thing about this story right now is that a lot of people start to share their own story, especially women.”
Nordic Watchlist spoke with Emilie Thalund at London Film Festival, where Weightless had a sold out debut. News on the film getting a UK release has not been confirmed yet, but watch this space.
