The deployed military man Markus has to go home to his teen-aged daughter Mathilde, when his wife dies in a tragic train accident. It seems to be plain bad luck – until the mathematics geek Otto shows up with his two eccentric colleagues, Lennart and Emmenthaler. Otto was also a passenger on the wrecked train. He is convinced someone must have been behind it. As the clues pile up, it becomes clear to Markus that it might have been a carefully orchestrated assassination, which his wife ended up being a random casualty of.

With RIDERS OF JUSTICE, I intended to create a drama with both touching moments and humour. It unfolds around a father and daughter, Markus and Mathilde. We stay with them in the extreme situation they find themselves in following the sudden loss of their wife/mother. The core of the story is pretty dark and serious. The underlying theme is quite monumental. The meaning of life. That kind of subject matter is daunting. It has to be communicated with humour, otherwise it is hard to cope with the gravity of it. You have to treat it lightly. That said, I would never prioritise humour over feelings. If I have to choose between feelings and humour, feelings always outweigh comedy. The characters have to be believable – at least to a certain extent. The comedy can easily creep in elsewhere.

Anders Thomas Jensen is known for his unique cinematic universe, the dark humour and his collection of characters with many contrasts – and he has directed the successful movies MEN & CHICKEN (2015), ADAM’S APPLES (2005), THE GREEN BUTCHERS (2003) and the iconic FLICKERING LIGHTS (2000). Anders Thomas Jensen has also found success as a screenwriter on a wide range of other Danish movies, including in collaboration with Susanne Bier, Lone Scherfig, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen and Nikolaj Arcel. Anders Thomas Jensen wrote the screenplay for Susannes Bier’s LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED (2012) as well as the Oscar-winning IN A BETTER WORLD (2010), while the two of them were four years prior to that Oscar-nominated for AFTER THE WEDDING (2006). In addition to that, Anders Thomas Jensen has written the screenplays for, among other movies, DANIEL (2019), THE SUN KING (2005), MURK (2005), THE DUCHESS (2008) and ALL FOR TWO (2012). In 2003, he was awarded an honorary Bodil award for his collected contribution to Danish cinema after having made a name for himself with a considerable number of feature films in a range of genres after his breakthrough in 1999, when he won an Oscar for the short film ELECTION NIGHT after his first two short films, ERNST & THE LIGHT (1996) and WOLFGANG (1997), had been Oscar-nominated.

FILMOGRAPHY:
2020 - RIDERS OF JUSTICE
2015 - MEN & CHICKEN
2005 - ADAM’S APPLES
2003 - THE GREEN BUTCHERS
2000 - FLICKERING LIGHTS