Man Divided

Documentary series about Diana, Lotte, Kragelund, Tobisen, Lau and Anna who all work at the local factory Viking in Esbjerg, Denmark. Now they fear for their jobs.

The meaning of life, death and everything else? The possible answers are plenty in Max Kestner's adventurous film, which starts when the death of a giraffe at the Copenhagen Zoo goes viral from Hollywood to Chechnya.

Over a period of 6 years award winning director Max Kester follows two best friends and top engineers as they follow their dream to build a "DIY" rocket to travel into space. If they succeed, Denmark will be only the fourth nation in history to launch people beyond the Earth's atmosphere. Against their families odd's and technical challenges they build the cheapest rocket for the costs of a small car. They attract a group of space-flight enthusiasts from around the world who support them with great excitement. It's the story of one of the greatest dreams of humankind and how to make it come true, despite such everyday obstacles as losing your screwdriver or fighting about whose turn it is to take out the trash. It's a film about reaching for the stars.

When we die, there are still some practicalities that need to be taken care of before our time among the living is finally over. In Meanwhile on Earth we enter the world around our end station, an industry of death. It is a place where the existential meets the mundane, the sacred meets the profane.

People in a room in an apartment in a house on a street in a city. "Dreams in Copenhagen" is Max Kestners's documentary film portrait of Denmark's capital. A film about the physical surroundings that are part of shaping our lives. About the buildings we wake up in, the front doors we walk out of, the streets we traverse. It is also a film about how the way we live our lives affect our physical surroundings. About places we dream of and the walls onto which we scratch the names our loved ones, before it is too late.

This is the story of Max, the director's own story, playfully animated within the realms of documentary. Max's story goes back several generations to sailors, industrialists and Summer of Love hippies, all of whom are depicted with whole-hearted love and equal amounts of irony.

This is Denmark. This is Denmark’s most sold car. This house’s worth has doubled over the last 3 years. A measuring tape and some hedges. So begins Max Kestner’s story on Denmark. With an even-keeled narrative, this film takes us on a kaleidoscope tour around Denmark— from an editorial meeting at a magazine, to dictation in an Elementary school; from singing in a kindergarten, to a family planning their vacation; from a meeting with Pia Kjærsgaard, to a real estate agent in front of a newly sold house and a Danish landscape seen from above. These everyday situations tell universal stories about us. These are contemporary stories. This is Denmark’s world. With speed we shift through each story from up close to far away. This film is a mix of studio recordings with Denmark as its setting. This story is linear with a system of coordinates and a range of colors on repeat. Pseudo-scientific scenes are instruments that make it possible to isolate and compare objects and people.

Elisabet wakes up one night and isn't sure if it was her own scream that woke her. At the same time Lucia crosses Plaza Tetuan and is hit by a wind that awakens a childhood memory. Both women carry a loss. We don't know how it is to be the person that sits next to us on the metro. Sometimes we still find ourselves reaching out for him or her. Sometimes we get a hold while other times they slip through our fingers. One Thursday, Elisabet and Lucia ride the same metro in the direction of Pobleneu.

When Thomas Altheimer sues his former friend and fellow artist Claus Bech-Nielsen for identity theft in the shape of the book "Sovereign", it sends Altheimer into a maze of Kafkaesque paranoia.

Lulu and Jenni will soon have a little brother. They are exited. Time passes slowly when you are waiting, and the two sisters spend time preparing their little brother's arrival, and they talk about what it means to be a good big sister. Days go by while their parents pull Lulu and Jenni through the everyday routines. Finally the miracle happens.

Docu-comedey about danish musician Rasmus Nøhr and manager Morten Holm trying to break through to the music industry.

Three Danish polar scientists tragically lost their lives during an expedition to North-Eastern Greenland from 1906-08. Only one of them was found. More than a hundred years later the mystery and tragedy still nags indomitable amateur historian Steffen Holberg, who is absolutely determined to solve it. With help from knowledgeable people, professional experts and state archives, he moves ever deeper into the rugged terrain between truth and myth, fiction and reality to find out what happened - if he can. Mylius-Erichsen, Høgh Hagen, and Jørgen Brønlund died in the wilderness, but the expedition's search team only found Brønlund's dead body and did not even look for the other two. But why not? In his poetic and imaginative signature style, Max Kestner pays tribute to Holberg's curiosity and to the fundamental human desire to satisfy it. 'Every time you move closer, new worlds appear,' says Kestner about his own working method.