Meet Henrik Ruben Genz

Who is Henrik Ruben Genz, the Danish film director?

Henrik Ruben Genz is a Danish film director, born in 1959 in a small town called Gram, in Denmark. But Genz did not start with films. His first big dream was to become a painter.

He gave up painting and studied graphic design at a design school in Kolding, Denmark.

At school he tried video, and a chance meeting with director Arne Bro pushed him toward film.

At thirty-one, he got into the National Film School of Denmark, late compared to many young directors.

He graduated with a well-loved short film called Cross Roads, in Danish Omveje, in 1995. His next short, Theis and Nico, came out in 1999 and was nominated for an Academy Award!

• Oscar nominee, 1999

Then he tried the Dogme 95 movement, which has strict rules, but it did not work for him.

He called himself a visual director. Dogme, he said, makes the camera just follow the actors. In 2003 he made his first feature film, Someone like Hodder, from a children's book by Bjarne Reuter.

In 2005 came Chinaman, a romantic comedy about a man who takes a foreign wife.

So Genz went from painter, to designer, to award-nominated director, with a path full of detours. Quick question: which of his films was nominated for an Academy Award? Henrik Ruben Genz is a Danish director who turned a late start and a design background into Oscar-nominated films.