Heartbound

Synopsis

In the small fishing community of Thy in northern Denmark, 926 Thai women are married to Danish men, a trend that started 25 years ago when a former sex worker from Pattaya married a Thy native and has since helped lonely local men and impoverished women from her village find someone to share life with. Acclaimed filmmaker Janus Metz and his anthropologist wife, Sine Plambech, follow four of these Thai-Danish couples over ten years and two continents in an epic and intimately observed family chronicle about the needs, longings and dreams that unite and separate us across global boundaries. Above all, it is a film about love.

Director Biography

Janus Metz (b. 1974) is an internationally recognised and award-winning filmmaker. His latest film, Borg vs McEnroe (2017), was the opening film at last year's Toronto International Film Festival and has been distributed to cinemas all over the world. His documentary Armadillo (2010), received the Grand Prix of the Semaine de la Critique at the Cannes Film Festival and a number of additional awards, including an Emmy for best editing and a Grierson Award and a nomination at the European Film Awards. Sine Plambech is ananthropologist at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University. For 15 years, Plambech has worked with migrant societies in Thailand, Nigeria, Italy and Denmark, related to her research on migration, human trafficking, the European migrant crisis, sex work migration and marriage migration.