Memorial :: Christian Braad Thomsen
The most incorruptible man

By Nils Malmros, ekkofilm.dk
June 12, 2025


A good friend once asked me why on earth he was being honored with the Danish Arts Foundation's lifetime achievement award when nobody knew his films. I tried unsuccessfully to explain that that might precisely be the reason.

Braad Thomsen is undeniably one of Denmark’s top five most important living directors. His impact is measured not by the commercial success of his films, but by how fundamentally his work has shaped the evolution of Danish cinema.

A few years ago, Another World Entertainment launched the Christian Braad Thomsen Collection to highlight these pivotal works of cinematic art. Now, it is the turn of his 1979 film, Dreams Don't Make a Noise When They Die. —Kim Toft Hansen, Kulturkapellet, 20/7-2011

"With his soft voice, he spoke his mind unflinchingly, unconcerned with whether his words might wound,” writes director Nils Malmros about his colleague Christian Braad Thomsen.


Christian Braad Thomsen himself reports that at Rainer Werner Fassbinder's funeral, someone was called upon to continue the genius's work, and he felt that everyone's eyes were on him. Photo | Ulrik Hasemann

In Aarhus, two figures—Christian Braad Thomsen and Jørgen Leth—shared remarkably similar trajectories on paper. Neither came from an academic background. During their high school years at Katedralskolen and Marselisborg, each cut his teeth as a jazz writer for local newspapers (Århus Stiftstidende and Demokraten). Both went on to become accomplished film directors and authors, later writing memoirs about their lives and directing films about their upbringing. Ultimately, both men earned a spot on the Danish Arts Foundation's prestigious list of lifetime achievements.

But that is where the resemblance ends. For while Jørgen Leth plays the role of Aladdin, Christian Braad Thomsen was Noureddin—and now, Christian has slipped away at the age of 84.

Yet, it is Christian’s memoirs, Wrath, Goddess, Sing!, that pack the real punch. There is something profoundly heartbreaking about reading his story—a man rejected by Irene, the high school beauty he so desperately adored, who stumbled at his graduation exam, and whose films never quite caught the spotlight. He stands in stark, poetic contrast to Leth: the man who wore a woman's veil and spent a lifetime showered with praise for his every breath (setting aside the infamous chef's daughter scandal, of course)**.

Knots in his emotional life

If you have seen Christian’s hometown masterpiece, Wellspring of my World (Herfra min verden går), you will know that he grew up south of Aarhus in the tiny village of Bjertrup. He lived on a modest smallholding that has since been completely swallowed up by a modern highway. 

When he finally plucked up the courage to invite his high school classmates over for a party, the refined, middle-class girls asked where the restroom was. They were promptly directed to the ditch where the cows did their business—if the legend is to be believed! 

But what is absolutely true—and I can vouch for this firsthand as a fellow student at Aarhus Cathedral School—is that despite earning sky-high grades in the humanities, he shockingly failed his final graduation exam. He had to run a gauntlet of shame, showing up utterly devastated to the graduation ceremony in the schoolyard.

But as it turned out, you didn't need a high school diploma to get into the National Film School of Denmark. Christian beat out several hundred hopeful applicants to secure a spot in the school’s very first class in 1966. 

By then, he had already clinched financial backing for his debut feature film from the Danish Film Foundation and carved out a name for himself as one of the country's most formidable film critics.

Word has it that the film school back then was fiercely polarized, split cleanly into a Truffaut wing and a Godard wing. Christian deeply revered both French masters, a dual obsession that bled directly into his first feature film, Dear Irene (1971)—a project fueled by the ambitious desire to tackle both unrequited love and political oppression in a single breath. 

Since then, Christian directed four more feature films, which, as I recall, all revolved around the intricate emotional knots rooted in childhood. The lone, cheerful exception to this psychological landscape was his comedy, Koks i kulissen.

Devotion to the masters

Though Christian fiercely defended his own work until his final breath, his greatest legacy lies in his fierce, all-consuming devotion to his cinematic heroes—many of whose films he personally imported.

First came Jean-Luc Godard, followed by a distinguished lineage of fiercely independent auteur directors. But above them all stood Rainer Werner Fassbinder, a filmmaker with whom Christian shared a connection that felt almost symbiotic.



Christian himself recalled that at Fassbinder’s funeral, the mourners were scouting for someone to carry on the genius's legacy—and he felt every eye in the room fixated on him. Mortified, he lamented that he simply lacked that kind of artistic caliber.

It is easy to chuckle at such immodest modesty, but Christian was the most brutally honest and incorruptible soul I have ever known. In his characteristically soft voice, he would speak his mind without a filter, entirely unconcerned with whether his words might sting.

After screening my debut feature, he reminded me of a critic who had once famously written: "I could kill for less!" Yet, he would also write with fierce enthusiasm, completely devoid of petty jealousy, about his Danish peers whenever he sensed a genuine artistic quest—from Lars von Trier to Jytte Rex.

Warring against knee-jerk moralism

Beyond his filmmaking and cinema studies, Christian produced an extensive body of work deeply anchored in Sigmund Freud and the realms of psychoanalysis—a field he mastered with profound passion and expertise. 

It is striking, then, that his lifelong, self-appointed tenure as the country's unofficial Minister of Culture was fueled by the power of his pen. 

His uncompromising honesty frequently dragged him into the center of fierce public debates, where he launched blistering attacks on what I can only describe as "reflex moralism." He went so far as to suggest that certain incestuous relationships could actually be happy in the moment, only to be traumatized later by the crushing weight of society's taboos.

In a move that was purely kamikaze, he went on to write that the public vilification of pedophiles was, in principle, no different from “the Nazi persecution of the 1930s, which branded all Jews as criminals.” 

As far as I know, Christian and Jørgen Leth never actually spoke to one another. Yet, I found myself maintaining a back-and-forth connection with both men, bound partly by our shared regional roots.

When my final feature film, Sorrow and Joy—which centers on the tragic loss of my daughter—was viciously savaged in the film magazine Ekko by Klaus Rifbjerg (a man who had otherwise championed my life's work), Christian immediately leapt to my defense, launching a fierce, frontal assault on Klaus. Jørgen Leth, meanwhile, held back, seemingly indebted to the Spirit of the Lamp. 

My deepest respect goes out to Christian Braad Thomsen—and to the unwavering courage he possessed.

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**
"The Chef's Daughter" is a reference to a notorious passage in Jørgen Leth's autobiography, The Imperfect Human, in which he details a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl in Haiti. The revelation sparked immense public outrage, ultimately costing Leth his high-profile positions as a TV commentator for TV2 and as the Danish honorary consul to Haiti.