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 should be honored with the Danish Arts Foundation's lifetime achievement award, when we don't know his films. I tried unsuccessfully to explain that this could be the reason.

Braad Thomsen is in a close top five of the most important Danish living directors. It's not because the films themselves have had much impact, but it's connected to the importance that his work and thus his films have had for the development of Danish film.

Another World Entertainment launched a Christian Braad Thomsen Collection a few years ago to highlight these central works of film art. Now the time has come for Dreams Don't Make a Noise When They Die from 1979. --Kim Toft Hansen, kulturkapellet, 20/7-2011

"With his soft voice, he said straight out what he felt without thinking about whether it might be hurtful," 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 we had two people – Christian Braad Thomsen and Jørgen Leth – who on paper looked very similar to each other.

They both came from non-academic backgrounds. During their high school years (Katedralskolen and Marselisborg) they both became jazz writers for their respective newspapers (Århus Stiftstidende and Demokraten). They both became film directors and authors and have both written memoirs about their lives and made films about their upbringing. They are both on the Ministry of Culture's list of lifetime achievements.

But then the similarity ends. Because while Jørgen Leth is Aladdin, Christian Braad Thomsen is Noureddin – and now Christian is dead. He was 84 years old.

But Christian's memoirs, Wrath, Goddess Sing! are the best. Because it is most moving to read about him, who was scorned by the adored Irene in high school and failed his matriculation exam, and whose feature films never received much recognition. In contrast to him who wore a woman's veil and throughout his life has been praised for everything he has done (if we ignore the chef's daughter **).

Knots in emotional life

If you have seen Christian's hometown film Wellspring of my World (Herfra min verden går), you will know that Christian grew up in Bjertrup south of Aarhus in a homestead that was located where a highway is today.

When he dared to invite his classmates to a party in high school, and the nice middle-class girls asked where the toilet was, they were directed to the ditch where the cows shit (if that is really true!).

But it is true – because I can attest to this as a middle school student at the Cathedral School – that despite sky-high grades in the humanities, he failed his high school diploma. He ran the gauntlet and met disappointed the graduation ceremony in the schoolyard.

But you don't need a high school diploma to get into the Danish Film School. Christian got in as part of the very first class in 1966, despite the fact that there were several hundred applicants.

At that time, Christian had already received support for his first feature film from the Film Foundation and had also established himself as one of the country's most significant film writers.

The film school was – allegedly – completely divided into a Truffaut wing and a Godard wing. Christian had veneration for both directors, which also influenced his first feature film Dear Irene (1971), which was intended to be about both unrequited love and political oppression.

Since then, Christian has made four feature films, which I remember were about knots in emotional life, rooted in childhood. The only cheerful exception was Koks i kulissen.

Support for the idols

Despite the fact that Christian defended his own works until his death, his greatest effort was his all-encompassing support for the idols, whose films he imported in several cases.

First Jean-Luc Godard, and after him a long line of significant, independent auteur directors and above all Rainer Werner Fassbinder, with whom Christian felt almost symbiotically connected.

Christian himself recounts that at Fassbinder's funeral, they were looking for someone who could continue the genius's work, and he felt that all eyes were on him. He regretted, embarrassed, that he did not have that format.

It is easy to be amused by such immodest modesty, but Christian was the most honest and incorruptible person I have ever met. In his soft voice, he said straight out what he felt without thinking whether it might be hurtful.

After seeing my first feature film, he remembered a reviewer who had once said: "I could kill for less!"

But he also wrote enthusiastically, without petty envy, about his Danish colleagues, whom he felt were genuine in their artistic quest. From Lars von Trier to his wife Jytte Rex.

Fighting reflex morality

In addition to the films and books about films, Christian had an extensive body of writings, which was largely centered on Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalysis, which he was deeply interested in and knowledgeable about.

It is thus striking that his lifelong service as Minister of Culture was based on his writing.

His honesty brought him into several debates, where he attacked what I would describe as “reflex moralism”. For example, he dared to believe that there were incestuous relationships that were happy while they lasted, but which were subsequently traumatized by society’s taboos.

Quite kamikaze-like, he wrote that the harassment against pedophiles is no different in principle from “the Nazi harassment of the 1930s, which branded all Jews as criminals”.

I don't think Christian and Jørgen Leth ever spoke to each other. But I had alternating contact with both of them, partly because of our common roots.

When my last film, Sorrow and Joy for the loss of my daughter, was viciously disparaged in the Filmmagazine Ekko by the author Klaus Rifbjerg – who had otherwise praised my life's work – Christian came out in my defense in a frontal attack on Klaus, while Jørgen Leth held back, as he was indebted to the Spirit of the Lamp.

All the best to Christian Braad Thomsen and his courage.

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** 

"The Chef's Daughter" is a reference to a passage in Jørgen Leth's autobiography, "The Imperfect Human", in which he describes a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl in Haiti. This passage caused great controversy and led to Leth losing his position as a television commentator on TV2 and as Danish honorary consul in Haiti.