Ghita Nørby stars in family drama to be shot on Danish island of Funen.

While preparing two German features – new adaptions of Russian author Vladimir Nabokov’s Laughter in the Dark and Austrian author Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity - Danish Oscar-winning director Bille August will on Monday start principal photography for a new Danish family drama, Quiet Heart (Stille hjerte), on the island of Funen.

From an original story by Christian Torpe, the Jesper Mothorst production for SF Film willl reunite August with Danish actress Ghita Nørby, who played the lead in his Ingmar Bergman film from 1992, The Best Intentions (Den goda viljan), which received the Palme d’Or in Cannes.

August also won the top prize in Cannes for Pelle the Conqueror (Pelle Erobreren/1988), which went on to collect the Golden Globe and the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Feature.

Quiet Heart follows three generations of a family, gathered for a weekend to say goodbye to Esther - their wife, mother, mother-in-law, grandmother and friend; she is seriously ill, and they have accepted her wish to die before the disease deteriorates. But as the weekend progresses, they realise that the decision is difficult to handle – and that the family has never needed each other as much as now.

In the role as Esther, Nørby will perform with Morten Grunwald as her husband, Vigga Bro, Paprika Steen, Jens Albinus, Oskar Sælan, Danica Curcic and Pilou Asbæk. Photographed by Dirk Brüel, the film is backed by TV2 Danmark, FilmFyn and supported by the Danish Film Institute. SF Films has scheduled the domestic launch for September 2014.

August, who most recently signed Night Train to Lisbon, starring Jeremy Irons, Mélanie Laurent and Jack Huston, had not made a Danish film since 1987, when last year he returned with Marie Krøyer, about the marriage of two Danish artists. The film took 296,000 admissions and was nominated for six Robert awards by the Danish Film Academy.