Danish film producer Per Holst died Saturday, Aug. 23. He was 86.
Holst’s death was confirmed by his son, Anders Holst, who spoke to Danish TV 2.
Holst left behind a culturally significant body of work, including his breakthrough animation film “Benny’s Bathtub,” which was released in 1971. He also produced the 1987 Oscar-winning film “Pelle the Conqueror.” His other credits include “Zappa,” “The Element of Crime,” “Flaming Hearts,” “Hugo the Jungle Animal” and “Jingle Waltz.”
Holst got his start in the film world when he became a runner in Nordisk Film’s advertising department. He then worked in commercials before the release of “Benny’s badekar.” In a 2020 interview with Kosmorama, Holst admitted the film’s team was able to make it “really cheaply.” As he put it (via a translation of the original interview), “I think we agreed that everyone would get 300 kroner a day if they did something, and it went really well.”
Holst also admitted a career as a producer was not easy to maintain, especially since predicting the success of a project can be difficult. “On ‘The Farewell Hour’ we had a lab credit of a million, I think, at least 500,000, but we lost at least 500,000 on that film,” he said. “Not a soul came … 500,000 was a lot of money back then. That was a whole year’s profit that went into that film, and of course we were a little scared by that.”
Elsewhere, Holst also said he would have “preferred to be a director” but others were “more talented than me” so he landed in producing — a switch that ended up working well for him. As he put it, “The advantage of being a director or having trained as a director is that you can go into all the phases and get involved, and you can remember your miles of film and say that that clip is not good enough. These are some things that you know something about.”
Holst also acted as director of Nordisk Film from 1991 to 2002 and then also founded the production companies PH3 and Asta Film in 2002. He was chairman of the European Film Academy from 2000 to 2005.
Per Holst was born on March 28, 1939, in Denmark and is survived by his wife Kristina Møller and their children.
