PÖFF 2025: Pretty Young Love | Interview with Mogens Hagedorn

Morgens Hagedorn, the director of Pretty Young Love, presented at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, met me online after his premiere to discuss his movie. Our conversation flowed naturally from the themes of the movie, the artistic choices that went into making it as well as the presence of streamers in cinematography today and we finished with the exploration of what it means to be human.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Tell me about your experience at Tallinn so far.

Mogens Hagedorn: Pretty Young Love was shown on Saturday, so we arrived to Tallinn on Friday and we attended the opening ceremony, which was quite impressive. First of all, it was just really well done. It was fast-paced and even though I don’t speak the language, I felt included, which was nice because there were translations on screen or translating into English and it was very nice.

And what made the biggest impression on me was actually that you had the President and the Minister of Defence at the opening ceremony of a film festival. That would never happen in Denmark. It’s like those things are like two separate things, but it felt like we were doing some important stuff since the President were there and the Minister of Defence were there. And I think the Minister of Defence said something like, if you don’t have any values to defend, what is there to defend? Which was quite impressive.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: That’s really beautiful, yes, because it feels to me, for a lot of people who want to feel strong, it’s beneath them to enjoy works of art. And why do you say that the President wouldn’t attend in Denmark? It isn’t that common?

Mogens Hagedorn: I think in Denmark, culture might be a little bit more separated from government. It’s not that it’s not taken seriously, but it’s like we’re little bit like some funny dudes on the side doing some funny stuff for entertainment and then the grown-ups are doing politics and business. And I just felt the balance was different in Tallinn, which was nice – to be taken a little bit more seriously as an artist.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: That’s a very philosophical statement. I’ve lost my train of thought completely now.

Mogens Hagedorn: I also think, of course, when you’re living this close to this stupid, great, big neighbour that wants to overtake your country, I mean, it kind of makes you revalue what’s important in life. And since we don’t have that much pressure in Denmark, we might not really think about it. But I guess when you live this close to some dictator it kind of makes you wonder what you’re doing and why you’re doing stuff in another way.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Yes, it’s a really interesting point because exactly what you said, when you are under threat, there is no more this need to gain status and money, but to preserve what connects you with everyone else and the culture that makes you who you are.

Mogens Hagedorn: That was very impressive when going to the opening ceremony to feel that.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Let’s talk about your movie, the reason why you’re in Tallinn. I’m sure you’re very proud of your film. I read that Pretty Young Love is a sequel feel free to tell me more about this.

Mogens Hagedorn: In a way, yeah, it is, but it’s not like a sequel in the traditional sense. It’s more like what we call a relay movie, if that makes sense. You when you run a relay, you have this baton and you pass it on to somebody else after you’ve done your run.

It takes place in a high school and the first movie took place during the first year in high school. This movie takes place during the second year of high school. But the characters are almost all different.

In this movie, there’s only the main character, Selma. And she was the supporting actress in the previous movie and she’s not going to be in the third movie. She’s not going to be the main character and one of the supporting actresses is going to be the main character in their third year in high school.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: What attracts you to high school as a setting?

Mogens Hagedorn: Actually, to be honest, when Marcella, our producer, asked me if I would do this movie, I was like, my God, I just did a Netflix series for three years that took place in a Norwegian high school. And I felt I was old enough to finally graduate from high school. But then I read the script that Lena, our screenwriter, had written, and it was moving and touching in a way that I felt like, okay, I have to do this.

Because I think the message of trying to be true to who you are and find your own inner voice instead of seeking the truth out there all the time was very moving and very true. So I felt I had to do this.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Yes, I felt the character of Selma was easy to relate to, even though she doesn’t speak a lot. But you can still sympathize with her and you see yourself in that position in some parts of your life.

Mogens Hagedorn: Yeah, exactly. I think many people of different ages can relate to this. That why to me, it was so much more than just a high school movie. And that’s why I said, yes, let’s do it.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: What other aspects of Selma’s character do you feel that made her a good protagonist for your story, for this story?

Mogens Hagedorn: So, in the beginning she has these new friends that she’s trying to get to know and belong with them just like everybody wants to belong to a group and she’s trying to belong to this group, even though it’s kind of toxic and the leader of the group is a little bit of a toxic element. But everybody in the whole world, I think, feels kind of isolated and alone and you want to belong to different groups. And she’s also trying to attach to this group and she’s trying to do her best.

But then she finds out that the mechanics within this group don’t really fit her. She can’t be herself in that group. She has to sacrifice her own self to belong to this group. And then she has this relationship with her teacher and that’s kind of the same thing. Of course, it’s a true romantic relationship, but since you can’t really have a relationship with a teacher, that’s also not made for her. And then she has this relationship with her instrument, which to me is like a metaphor for herself and her inner longings and inner voice. And she has to refine that relationship.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Allow herself to be herself, really.

Mogens Hagedorn: Exactly. And after allowing herself to be herself, she has to stand up in front of everybody and play this solo, which she hates. She says like five times, I hate playing in front of other people. Like she can’t really find out how to be herself in front of other people. And then she has to do that by the end. And find her own boundaries that she’s kind of messing around with in terms of the relationship with her girlfriends, but also with the teacher. It’s hard to find your own boundaries when you’re young and insecure.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Very much so. There’s a strong youth party culture present in the film, and it reminds me of a TV show from the early 2000s from Channel 4. Maybe you know it, Skins? Have you seen it?

Mogens Hagedorn: I’ve heard of it but I didn’t see it.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: It’s the party scenes that remind me of it and this need to escape or express yourself through going out and just a lot of drinking and so on. But what would you say are some of the characteristics of today’s youth party culture compared to when you were growing up?

Mogens Hagedorn: I have a daughter that’s 20 years old now. So, I’ve kind of followed this on the sidelines. Of course, she doesn’t tell me everything because you don’t tell your parents everything. But you know, what I’ve noticed is that I feel like they drink a lot. I mean, when I was young, we drank a lot, but I feel like they’re drinking even more, at least in Denmark. 

Cause for example, Thursday nights, it has become common that everybody in high school goes out on Thursday nights. Because the clubs figured out that they don’t have many guests on Thursday nights. So they decided to open the clubs and lower the age limit. Normally it’s 21 years of age, but on Thursdays it’s only 18. So, you have all these high school kids going to the clubs drinking. And they also they lower the prices a little bit. That’s how they target this high school audience, which is kind of crazy because then on Fridays people are sick or they sit lifelessly in class, which I think has become more crazy. I don’t know if they drink more, if they do that in, you know, in absolute terms, but it feels like alcohol is even more present now than it used to be when I was young, 30 years ago, 40 years ago.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: That’s really interesting because I got the opposite impression, at least from the younger people that are around me. It seems like they don’t smoke, they don’t drink, they sort of feel completely consumed in this online world and not so much looking for that sort of valve of expression. 

I haven’t looked into surveys or anything. I just watch my teenage daughter. Yeah, and my feel is that she’s they go out more and they drink more. And also, you know, when I was young, we didn’t have all those kinds of alcoholic beverages that tasted like soda. Today you don’t even notice that you’re drinking alcohol. We didn’t really have that.

But also, I lived in the countryside. That could be a difference. Now I live in the capital of Denmark and the drinking culture could be a little bit different here in the capital compared to the rural countryside where I grew up.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: And what do you think, at least compared to the characters in the film, what are the reasons that drive them to drink? Is it only wanting to feel more grown up, eager to be more important to themselves? Or is there a different reason, do you feel?

Mogens Hagedorn: I guess it’s to make yourself feel more free and do whatever you feel like and don’t speculate too much. Whereas, you know, when you’re in school, you have to use your brain all the time. And I think alcohol is not a great tool, but it’s a way to calm your clever mind and then be more in your body and feel like there are no boundaries to what you’re doing. I think that’s what they’re doing.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: That makes sense. Because there’s a lot of pressure from everywhere now. And then, of course, that makes sense why you would need it.

That’s true because when I watch my daughter going through high school the pressure is bigger now than what it used to be.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Tell me about the visual aspect of the film. It’s really engaging. I love some of the camera choices that sort of express what the characters are feeling, but also the title. The title is very interesting visually. So tell me about how you decided on these things.

My philosophy or my principle behind this was to shoot it the way it feels, not the way it looks. And I did that on different levels. I mean, all these girls are pretty. They’re more pretty than average. And that’s intentional because I think you sometimes feel like that. And the band in the school, they play better than the average high school band in second year. But I think that’s what it feels like, you when you’re playing with this group of people and things are going along well. This is how it feels. The solo that Selma plays on the sax, she plays better than the average second year person in high school. And I think that when you are in the groove, this is how it feels.

That’s what I set out to do. Let’s shoot it the way it feels. We also do some slow motion and of course this is not unique, but still we do slow motion and sometimes we spin the camera and stuff, but we don’t just spin it for the sake of spinning it. If you look at the movie, we spin it 360 degrees in a couple of instances. And that’s, of course, that’s when Selma’s world is turned upside down. When she sees her love interest suddenly become her music teacher. Her world is like spinning around or when she breaks up with him in the end, when she says we have to stop now. Then the camera spins again because her world is now spinning 360 degrees. So, I tried to incorporate the way it felt or the way it feels into the way it looks.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: I think you succeeded because there isn’t a lot of expressive dialogue but you can feel all of these things and it’s a very soothing movie; it makes you feel good and calm.

Mogens Hagedorn: Hopefully, that’s also because my main message, below all this is that you are a fantastic human being, whatever, whoever you are, listen to your inner voice. And there’s so much greatness inside you, whoever you are, whatever you look like and whatever. If you feel, you’re great, you’re a human being, you’re unique. That’s the main message I really want to convey.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: You mentioned before you were in a TV show for three years, was this Rita?

Mogens Hagedorn: No, this was Ragnarok, on Netflix. It is set in a high school in Norway and I shot it for three years. So, it’s exactly the same age span. That’s why I was reluctant to take on this movie, but it’s also a very crucial time. Maybe I never graduated from high school in my own mind.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: I was also very eager to leave high school and then I became an English teacher, so I never really left. But I read in your IMDB that you also directed a few episodes of Rita, the Danish TV show, also in high school.

Mogens Hagedorn: Yeah, that’s true. But Rita is not set in high school, that’s like elementary school. She has people that are almost in high school, but she also has people that are first class. But it’s elementary school.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Yes, you’re right! I saw it a long time ago. But my question is connected to Rita in a way. This was one of the first non-English speaking shows that I saw on Netflix. And of course, now we have so many titles from all over the world, which in some ways is really beautiful, because you get exposed to a lot of different cultures. But also, there’s a lot of like content there that’s of questionable quality.

As a filmmaker, how do you feel that streamers benefit filmmakers, if in any way, and what are some ways that they’re making your job more difficult?

Mogens Hagedorn: Before I started working on that show, Ragnarok I heard some bad stories because there had been another show done in Denmark and everybody was talking about Netflix that their people were was very micromanaging and it was horrible experience. So I was expecting the worst. But then when I started, I felt so great and so liberated.

At least in my experience they gave me lot of freedom. So, I felt like, okay, they come here with a lot of money, they give me lot of freedom. What’s not to like? That was my experience. Of course, there are some limitations like the characters can’t smoke too much, there can’t be too much nudity because Ragnarok was, I think it was like 13+ or whatever the category is. And they wanted to show it in very countries that are very strict with what can be shown on TV. So of course, there were some limitations that were a little annoying, but overall I was positively surprised that I had so much artistic freedom. Also it could depend on the exec you get at Netflix. There are many different people and they behave a little different. But the one we had, she was called Tesha Crawford, I remember her very well. She was very nice and I felt like they gave me an opportunity that I would never have had within the Danish system.

But of course, when you look at what’s on Netflix and other streaming platforms, it’s like there’s a lot of not so good stuff where you can feel like they just need to have a lot of stuff on their shelves. And then the criteria of quality isn’t always so high. But I think overall, if you find your way through it, it gives you more opportunities than without them.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: I agree, because I find that it really opens up a whole world for everyone to see and from countries you wouldn’t dream of ever being able to access through films or TV shows. I’m glad this was your experience, too.

Mogens Hagedorn: Exactly. But actually, there was a big conflict in Denmark a couple of years ago. Because in terms of copyright, the streamers wouldn’t accept the Danish copyright model. And then the unions in Denmark, my union and other unions went totally crazy about it. And I think it started to become a war which was unnecessary because of course you were representing two different worlds. But I felt like the dialogue was not done very well. There was a big conflict where Netflix withdrew from Denmark for a while and you could really feel that. I know a lot of people that went unemployed because of that: photographers, gaffers and so on. And some of them never came back to the business.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: And what was this issue about, the copyright issue?

Mogens Hagedorn: I was shooting in Norway at the time, so I’m not sure about all the details. In general, I agree that my union and other unions should really stand up for our rights. But then again, it’s a different story when you work with somebody that is present in like 179 countries instead of only in your own country. I think it became a war too fast. But since I wasn’t in the rooms when they were negotiating, I don’t really want to judge anybody. I can just say it was a shame because I felt like I really had a chance to do stuff that I couldn’t have been done before.

The budgets were a little bigger. When I was in Norway shooting, we just had a crane in the truck all the time. Normally when you shoot in Denmark, if you’re going to use a crane, you have to apply for it and everybody’s saying, we can’t afford that. Here we just had it in the truck. In an artistic sense, it gave me possibilities that I didn’t have before. So that’s why to me it felt like a shame that it turned into a war this fast.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: I guess it’s the same question again that we talked about before, the politics and the artistic side.

Mogens Hagedorn: Yeah, exactly. Also, when I did Ragnarok, we were still just shooting in Norway in a rural countryside, just ourselves, some Danish guys and some Norwegian guys. But then when it came out, I mean, it was so amazing that I got messages from Oklahoma and Venezuela and Peru and all over the world. This felt is so crazy because normally in Denmark, if a film is seen by 200,000 people, it’s a major success.

Here there were millions and millions of people watching what we were shooting it with this small camera on a mountain in Norway. So, to an artist, that was fantastic. You want people to see what you’re doing. That’s also something, that’s a possibility you get with the streamers that you would never get with the traditional system.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Absolutely, because there is a lot of people who, just like you said, with the President and the Minister of Defense, some people don’t necessarily feel welcome into these places of art, whether it’s a cinema or like an art house cinema. They don’t feel that they belong there. It’s much, much easier to reach them through streamers in their living rooms.

Mogens Hagedorn: Another disadvantage could be that young people don’t go to the movies that much anymore. I think that’s a fact in Denmark right now. Because for the price of a movie ticket they can have two months of Netflix, but that’s another discussion. Then again, in terms of Pretty Young Love, Netflix invested some money upfront and they’re kind of co-financing the movie so they get the rights to show it later at some point.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: So, we’ve decided streamers are good. They’re pretty good.

Mogens Hagedorn: They’re good. There are some complications, but I’d rather have them than not have them.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Since we went back to the movie, tell me about the title. Because in Danish it’s only one word and then in English it’s Pretty Young Love. Does it translate directly or is it there a difference?

Mogens Hagedorn: Actually, in Danish, the first one was called Beautiful. And then this one it’s like the next level; it’s called More Beautiful. And then the third one is going to be called, I guess, The Most Beautiful. And then actually, would like to do a fourth film called Ugly about the year after high school.

Because when you’re finishing high school, at least in Denmark, everybody’s feels on top of the world. And when school finishes, the whole thing just disintegrates and everybody is all by themselves trying to get a crappy job, finding out what to study and stuff. So actually, I think that year is kind of so underexposed. I would like to do that, but that’s a long way down the line.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Maybe in a few years we’ll be talking about that as well.

Mogens Hagedorn: Yeah, but anyway, you were talking about the title, so Pretty Young Love, no, that’s kind of some English translation, trying to make a good title out of what is not very easy to translate.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: Tell me about your choice of plot for Pretty Young Love, it’s a little bit tricky in today’s cancel culture and political correctness to have a student fall in love with her teacher. Why was Selma’s story important to you in this context?

Mogens Hagedorn: To me it wasn’t extremely important that she fell in love with her teacher, but what felt right for me was that she did something that’s completely wrong in a moral sense. Because I think if she had to make some kind of mistake, mean it’s always interesting if the hero does something that’s wrong. And in today’s society this is completely wrong.

Then we modified it, of course, and they started out having some kind of attraction to each other before they knew that they were going to end up in a teacher-student relationship. But actually, and this is no secret, Lina, the scriptwriter, had a similar thing going on in her high school years. She had a drama teacher that she had an affair with. So, it’s kind of also based on that. And I respected that. I felt that since she was a woman and she felt urged to tell this story. I was like, I’m going to tell it together with her.

But I you asked me to do a story about some woman in high school that does something that’s wrong, I don’t think I would have come up with this story, to be honest. Because there’s so many pitfalls. I mean, me being an older guy doing a story about this… Sometimes I woke up at night and thinking, my God, when this opens, I’m going to be cancelled!

Because it’s so easy to do something that’s feels a little off. That’s why I spent a lot of time casting the guy who plays the teacher, Johan. Because that balance I felt was crucial to how the movie felt. If he was too self-assured, too handsome and too much into himself, you’d be like, ah, he’s only taking advantage of her. And if he was too insecure, too nerdy, you would ask yourself, why would she fall for this guy? There was like this very delicate balance that I spent a lot of time on achieving.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: I like your use of the word delicate because the entire relationship is very delicate as well as the whole film so that it makes sense, your choices do make sense.

I also really paid attention to do those delicate choices deliberately and try to find this balance because of course it’s easy to step on a landmine when you tell this story. But I also think it’s interesting when you do something that everybody says is wrong. It’s so much easier to do something what everybody says is right.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: It’s not that wrong, though. It’s a grey area. It’s sort of wrong, but there’s a lot of excuses that you can make – we didn’t know and then we’re so close in age and so on. It’s a very grey area. I think it really adds to the delicateness of the story because there’s not a clear right or wrong.

Mogens Hagedorn: Exactly. That’s also why I also try to avoid all those moral statements, even though I’m trying to state a lot of the moral issues in the movie, I try to avoid, you know, wagging too much with the finger saying this is good, this is bad, because I think the world is grey. I mean, there are no monsters, there’s only human beings.

Ramona Boban-Vlahović: We are nearly at the end, so I will go back to something you mentioned before. I read in your director’s statement that for you, Pretty Young Love is a sweeping romance, but beneath it, it says something deeply important about what it means to be human. And my question to you is, what does it mean to be human to you? What perception of yours about being human were you trying to express?

Mogens Hagedorn: I think I’m trying to express that if you’re human you’re unique and your voice is unique and you have to listen to it you have to trust your instincts. Also, that sometimes just because everybody around you is trying to tell you otherwise you need to listen to your inner voice. It’s not like you should always obey it, but you should at least listen to it and respect it a lot and feel something that’s genuine and unique and real no matter what everybody else tells you.