Last month, Scandinavian major Nordisk Film acquired 50% of the shares in Denmark's Zentropa - backing that will enable the company founded by Lars von Trier and Peter Aalbaek Jensen to expand internationally.

After years of Dogme manifestos, irreverence and a rebellious nature, has age finally caught up with the maverick Danes' 'I'm 52 very soon and Lars is also in his 50s,' says Aalbaek Jensen of the alliance with Nordisk. 'It's a matter of how many years you can be the young rascals. We're still running naked out here, yes, but maybe it's becoming more and more pathetic.'

Aalbaek Jensen suggests the company will now 'try to go a little bit more into the budget-wise extremes - make more really cheap films and more expensive films and try to get out of the mid-budget films.'

He insists Nordisk will not try to curb Zentropa's anarchic instincts. 'We're one of the most profitable film-production companies in Scandinavia so there is no reason for them to try to change us.'

Zentropa, Aalbaek Jensen believes, is simply reacting to changing market conditions as the film business moves out of the analogue era and into the digital age. 'Even on the arthouse side, everything is getting more industrialised. It's bigger deals, bigger packages in terms of television sales,' he notes.

The company is looking to establish production bases everywhere from Berlin (under Maria Koepf) to Amsterdam and Warsaw. It is also moving ahead with various high-profile productions.

Trier's long-gestating horror picture Antichrist will start shooting in late summer. Casting is underway on the $10.9m (EUR7m) project, which will shoot in North Rhine Westphalia in Germany.

And, no, this will not be a Brechtian, Dogville-style exercise in minimalism, says Aalbaek Jensen. 'As far as I can judge, the film will look more like The Element Of Crime or Europa,' he suggests.

Susanne Bier is preparing Julius, a $15.7m (EUR10m) drama about a Holocaust survivor.

At this week's MipTV, Zentropa's sales arm Trust and Nordisk Film Sales are sharing a stand with new design. It is part of co-operation between SF Film, Trust Film Sales, Nordisk Film Sales and Nordisk Film TV World. However, Aalbaek Jensen insists Trust, like Zentropa itself, will maintain its own identity.

'Trust will still be the arthouse label and Nordisk will be the mainstream and family label.'

Aalbaek Jensen says Zentropa's international focus is nothing new. 'The Danish market has never been the number one issue for us because we make most of our money abroad.'

He adds that Zentropa, even when making its low-budget Dogme movies, has 'always tried to handle arthouse film in an industrial way. We always say, OK, we make art films but we put them into an industrialised frame. We have our sales company, our own facilities. We try to look at this as a business, even if we're making arthouse movies.'

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