Danish director Anne-Sofie Lindgaard is based between London & Copenhagen. This is Hardcore is a film made by Copenhagen-based production company Darling Productions CPH, co-founded by Anne-Sofie and her creative partner/producer Coco Guldsborg. In the Danish countryside at Anne-Sofie's parents, amidst 2020 lockdown, and peak alienation from her most coveted London home, the filmmaker also went through heartbreak. The film is introspective at its core - the narrative elicited from the filmmaker's anxiety journal- and yet it manages to expose those moments into empathetic visuals of loneliness and rumination.

This is Hardcore sets out to illustrate the 'hardcoreness' of human emotion and fragility when dealing with heartbreak and mental illness all at once.

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Anne-Sofie Lindgaard 'Going through multiple lockdowns and a heartbreak on top turned my 2020 into quite a personal crisis. Dealing with racing anxiety and trying to navigate all the emotions seemed so overwhelming, and I had all creative projects put on pause for a while. As I started to feel better, I knew I had to turn the emotional turmoil into something, which then became “This is Hardcore”. Finding ways of visually expressing the feelings I had been through was such a cathartic process and I’m sure that this project somehow brought me back on track.  It’s the most personal project I’ve ever done, which is incredibly daunting - but hopefully the film will be relatable to the many people out there feeling much the same.

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I went through these difficult times on the danish countryside at my parents’, which was such a contrast to my home in London. I wanted a location that felt as empty, silent and cold as I found going through the winter in the middle of nowhere in Denmark.

The narration is based on a mix of notes I’d write in my anxiety journal on difficult days and the claustrophobic sentences constantly intruding my thoughts making it so difficult to move forwards. The difficulty of navigating which physical sensations was caused by anxiety or heartbreak made the whole experience, as well as the film, as confusing and complex as emotions itself'

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