Welcome to herdel.com

The adventure starts here…

Herdel.com is a modern film and TV-production company located in Copenhagen. With a running production of several movies, documentaries, TV-programmes etc.

With more than 45 years in the film industry, executive producer Steen Herdel has produced several of the cornerstones of Danish cinema and been responsible for launching the careers of important directors such as Morten Arnfred, Niels Malmros, Bille August and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen.

Steen Herdel also produced Jørgen Leth’s acclaimed bike racing documentary feature “A Sunday in Hell” (1978) and Lasse Spang Olsen’ s action comedy “In China They Eat Dogs” (1999), which Variety compared to “Pulp Fiction” and “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”. An American remake is currently in negotiation.

Feature films

The feature film productions of Steen Herdel include “Leave us Alone” (1975), “The Double Man” (1976), “Could We Maybe” (1976), “Evening Land” (1977), “Boys” (1977), “Clark” (1977), North Sea Fishermen ” (1977), “The Marksman” (1977), “A Sunday in Hell” (1978), “You Are Not Alone” (1978), “Me and Charlie” (1978), “Honeymoon” (1978), “Wanna See My Beautiful Navel?” (1978), “Notebook on love” (1989), “In China They Eat Dogs” (1999) and”Better Off Dad” by Peter Ringgaard (2003).

Awards

Awards for feature films produced by Steen Herdel include Best Film at the Bodil Awards for “Boys”; Best Film at the Bodil Awards for “Me and Charlie”; Best Film, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress at the Bodil Awards for “Honeymoon”; the Audience Prize at the Lübeck Nordic Film Days for “Wanna See My Beautiful Navel?”; and the Audience Award at the Luxembourg International Film Festival as well as Best Special Effects at The Danish Film Academy Awards for “In China they eat Dogs”.

Nominations

Nominations include the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for “Leave us alone”, the Golden Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival for “Evening Land ” and again for “Honeymoon”, as well as Best Screenplay and Best Make-Up at The Danish Film Academy Awards for “In China they eat Dogs”. Steen Herdel also has a long list of awards for his exhausting production of documentaries.

Where is the boss

Take a look

Show Reel

In China they eat Dogs

Coffee BKI

Better off Dad

A Sunday in Hell

A world known masterpiece showing again and again. The making of this incredible film is World Film history. The World famous bicycle film is never surpassed – and has won a lot of prizes.

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Carl Th. Dreyer – My Metier

Director: Torben Skjødt Jensen

Director Torben Skjødt Jensen created this prize winning documentary where actors from Carl Theodor Dreyers films tell about this great world famous director and his way of working. The film is a fascinating study on Dreyers aesthetics, language and never compromising way of working with his movies.

Produced By Steen Herdel.

What’s up

Ongoing projects

“We survived”

10 people who were detained in KZ-camps are telling their stories from the unique rescue mission during the last days of WW2 where the Nazis tried to eradicate the obvious signs of their cruelty. They were picked up by shabby white buses that fought their way through Germanys bomb hitten roads and brought back the exhausted prisoners by the thousands to Denmark and Sweden

When are we NOT sick?

A documentary-style movie told in a special creative way. It´s about life as it can turn out to be for some of us. Constantly seeking when and how you can feel that you are OK mentally and physically. We are in the head of our main character who is thinking and speculating why life is for her as it is. Trying to navigate in our excellent (?) health system. She is a real living person, – not an actor. The is on the road to get healthy and the camera is with her on that trip.

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Benny Bee – A Wild, Clever and Successful Artist

Portraying the bridge between the artist himself and his artwork. A Road Movie travelling in and out of art and artist. Benny is constantly creating new frontiers and promoting H.C. Andersens original drawings and paper cuts on designer T-shirts all over the world. Co-working with Albert Contemporary/Jonathan Kvium.

Arnururlunnguaq

In our admiration of great male heroes we often forget the women even though their great deeds could never have been accomplished without these women.
The famous polar explorer Knud Rasmussen knew that he could never carry out his fantastic expeditions, 4 years of travelling and 18.000km without help from an Inuit woman.
Who can cook in minus 57 centigrades? Repair and keep up the standard of their life saving clothes? Or read the complicated and dangerous terrain and communicate with the dogs easily? These were just some of the very special skills they had learned from their own extreme living conditions that were now saving the life of the heroes.

Ruth Berlau

She mounted her bike and went to Paris – being a bit bored there she went back to Copenhagen and then biked to Moscow instead. After 3 months she came back as a communist. Ruth Berlau never focused on problems or barriers but always targeted her goals. She did not have any education but she had a strong will, was intelligent and the ability to see solutions for everything. The time was between the two Worldwars. The intellectual elite and many Jews left Germany to save their lives from Hitler´s tyranny.
She worked as director, photographer, writer and more. When Bertolt Brecht came to Denmark with his family she went to see him. The result was a lifelong cooperation between them. Hard work and love in a delicate mixture. She became friends with almost all the famous people of that time. Charlie Chaplin. W.H. Auden, Charles Laughton to mention a few. She wrote a book about feminine sexuality “Any animal can do it”. We tell the wild adventure of this woman´s life.

Danish doctors resisted Nazi-Germany

During WW2 the Danish government chose to cooperate with the Germans.

A heartfelt resistance quickly developed especially among doctors and hospitals. They had their privileges and unique possibilities to make a difference. They resisted relentlessly in many ways and often hit the Germans very hard. Often very dramatic episodes happened. It took great courage and sometimes almost juvenile foolishness to do what they did. This film is about some of the most wild and often very dangerous operations during the war.

Matriarchies

One hour documentary

The idea of a social order ruled by women – as opposed to the present one ruled by men – is a fascinating concept. Around the globe, there exist many societies with women in charge. How do these societies function?

Is there violence and if so, who are behind that violence?
How are people who make mistakes treated? Do they get shamed out or otherwise punished?
How are conflicts handled?
Are those societies characterised by competition – or do people contribute whatever they are able to?
How are attacks from external forces dealt with?
How are children raised? And how do those people deal with a crying, unhappy child: Caressing and comforting, or is the child pushed away?
Who handles the economy?
How do hierarchies and other power structures function?
What happens when someone dies?
How do they look upon themselves as a society

The magic bells of Copenhagen

The Bells of Copenhagen have their own special story.

The white busses - Movie

The wild history about the rescue of prisoners in German concentration camps during end of WWII

The Foie Gras Mafia

One of the very big industries is threatened by green thinking and concerns of animal welfare. But this billion $ industry has found new ways and new locations to create its foie gras products. Some of these new schemes exist outside the control of NGO-organisations and of the EU.

Grundtvig

A portrait of one of Denmark’s greatest humanists. He influenced our way of thinking in regards to education, humanity, youth, Christianity and much more.

“N. F. S. Grundtvig was a Danish pastor, author, poet, philosopher, historian, teacher and politician. He was one of the most influential people in Danish history, as his philosophy gave rise to a new form of nationalism in the last half of the 19th century. It was steeped in the national literature and supported by deep spirituality.” -Wikipedia