Danish veteran director Ole Christian Madsen’s Superclasico has been chosen as the Danish submission for the Foreign Language Oscar.

A member of the so called “golden cohort” at the Danish National Film School in the early 1990s, with Thomas Vinterberg and Per Fly, Ole Christian Madsen will fly the Danish colours in thw Best Foreign-Language Oscar race.

The local Oscar committee, chaired by producer Per Holst, chose to submit Madsen’s new feature, Superclásico, as the Danish candidate, in favour of Martin Zandvliet’s A Funny Man (Dirch) and Pernille Fischer Christensen’s A Family (En Familie).

Produced by Lars Bredo Rahbek and Signe Leick Jensen for Nimbus Film, with support from the Danish Film Institute, Superclásico stars Anders W Berthelsen, Paprika Steen and Jamie Morton. It was launched domestically on March 17 to take 185,000 admissions.

A comedy of marital discord, scripted by Madsen and Anders Frithiof August, the film follows 40-year-old Christian, whose wine business is close to bankruptcy, and whose wife Anna has left him for and a soccer star and now is a successful football agent in Buenos Aires.

Having directed the six-part The Spider (Edderkoppen) television series, Madsen made his feature debut in 1999 with Pizza King. His most recent film was the 2008 drama-actioner, Flame & Citron (Flammen & Citronen), which sold 673,000 tickets in Denmark.

Danish director Susanne Bier’s In a Better World (Hævnen) won both the 2011 Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign-Language Feature.

Previous Danish Oscar winners include Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast (Babettes gæstebud) in 1988 and Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror (Pelle Erobreren) in 1989.

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