B.O.Y. (Bruises of Yesterday) tells the heart-wrenching story of 16-year-old Tobias. Director Søren Green and actor Noa Risbro Hjerrild were filmmaker guests at this year’s Love & Anarchy festival, and I had a conversation with them about the background and making of the film.
Søren Green says that earlier he has made short films, and this is his first feature. He started brainstorming for the film with his longtime collaborator, screenwriter Tomas Lagermand Lundme. The initial idea was to portray “a guy who struggles with his self-esteem, loneliness, love and things like that,” explains Green. The director and screenwriter feel that rather than working at the office, there is a natural flow of ideas when walking, so while having a walk in Copenhagen they came up with new ideas that ended up in the final script. “Initially the protagonist was different, more mature, and the story itself was also darker. The final story is also dark, but it still has a brighter undertone compared to that initial story, at least its starting position has,” characterises Green. The makers’ background has influenced the script too – the director himself is from the countryside where the story mainly takes place. In turn, some of the previous stories by the screenwriter who grew up in Copenhagen were about identification or growing up in a dysfunctional family. Some experiences gathered from the other production team members also influenced the script.
It was also the first feature film for Noa Risbro Hjerrild, who gives a subtleperformance as Tobias. He was a little nervous when shooting, but at the same time it was an honor to be able to be a part of the film. The script evoked various emotions in the young actor, and he was touched by the story of the protagonist. He says that he prepared carefully, and in the end the filming was a good experience, but since the film deals with difficult issues, the experience was not exclusively fun. He had to be in the right state of mind, so he felt that the little nervousness he had actually helped him to get into the role of the introverted, reticent Tobias.
Seven years ago, Risbro Hjerrild acted in a short film by Green. The actor was cast in the short through an audition, but the screenwriter had also asked the director if he had thought about Risbro Hjerrild playing a lead role. The young actor had clearly made an impression on the production team.
According to Green, the film is Nordic both fundamentally and in its tone, and locations and the environment, especially the Danish countryside, were intentionally brought into the foreground. The filming on the island of Langeland was deliberately set in the summertime as a contrast to the themes of the story. “We didn’t want to depict these things through gray and rainy imagery, we wanted to make a sunny summer film,” says Green. The director sees the story as universal and hopes that it’s relatable also outside of the Nordic countries, and that the viewers will be able to relate to Tobias struggling in the crossfire of loneliness, self-discovery, the hardships of love and self-esteem issues.
The film’s Danish name Glasskår means “shard of glass”, which turns out to be an important symbol in the story. However, according to the creators, the name didn’t work well enough in English, so they thought about how to add more layers and the film’s themes to the name in other ways, and with that, B.O.Y. (Bruises of Yesterday) was established as the name. But let’s go back to broken glass for a moment: the film shows a lot of glass surfaces right from the beginning, and Tobias’s grandfather is even a glazier by profession. Green notes that glass is a material that easily breaks and shatters: “However, the pieces can be put back together – of course the end result will not be the same as before, but something new.”
The film premiered at the Love & Anarchy festival, so we got to enjoy it fresh from the oven. The director will continue the presentation tour next in Oslo. After filming, Noa Risbro Hjerrild has appeared in another feature film and short films. He states that the role of Tobias is the most noteworthy compared to these, because as the main character he is seen in almost every scene and image. Risbro Hjerrild wants to continue acting and also plans to apply for training in the field, and for the entrance exams he is currently training together with Jonathan Bergholdt Jørgensen, who played Jonah in B.O.Y.
Green has visited Finland once before, at another film festival, but for Risbro Hjerrild the experience was the first of its kind. Green states that the warm weather was a bit of a surprise, especially since the previous visit was in the middle of the coldest winter. Of course, the weekend in Helsinki was now spent mostly promoting the film, but they had a good time, and had already gotten to explore the city a bit, for example by walking along the seashore. “It’s as if the air here is somehow fresher and less polluted than in Denmark,” Risbro Hjerrild characterises the atmosphere of our northern capital.
Johanna Koivusaari