VIEW CLIP FROM "BLEEDER"!

Director Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish crime auteur whose 2008 film Bronson screens on Friday, September 18th, returns to the Cinefamily to present Gambler, the rarely-screened, very personal documentary exploration of Refn's travails in the Danish film industry, in a double feature with Bleeder, one of his gritty earlier works.

Gambler
"Gambler offers a candid view of Refn at work, struggling with impending bankruptcy, family pressures and the making of the second two parts of his Pusher trilogy. Left owing 5.5 million Danish crowns (about $877,000) of his own money after the flop of his third feature, Fear X, Refn munches through packets of antacid pills in a series of tense confabs with accountants, financiers who want him to make a commercial followup to his debut, Pusher. Refn's patient wife, actress Liv Corfixen, worries the young family of three will lose their house through his filmmaking gambles. After much comic procrastination over script duties and angsting about selling out, Refn starts shooting two Pusher films back-to-back, but must contend with nervous nonpro actors, like recovering drug addict Kurt Nielsen, who ups the comedic ante." -- Variety

Bleeder
"Being the second part of a proposed trilogy that began in 1996 with the release of Pusher, Bleeder further examines Refn's interest in examining criminality within a disadvantaged area of Copenhagen. Bleeder sees Leo (Kim Bodnia) drift out of society following the news that his girlfriend, Louise, is expecting their first child, something she is rather more enthusiastic about than he. Their friends include Lenny, who works at a video store, and Louise's brother, a small-time gangster. Through Lenny's job, the friends meet to watch violent horror films and pornography. Although Leo and Louis use these nights out with Lenny as a reason to leave their normal lives behind, Lenny is desperately trying to break away and to meet someone with whom he can love. When he sees the beautiful Lea working in a coffee shop near to his work, he becomes determined to meet her but the increasingly complex relationships between his friends threaten to destroy all of them." -- DVD Times

Co-presented by Danish Film Fest