The danish girl

Directed by Tom Hooper
Produced by Tim Bevan
Eric Fellner
Anne Harrison
Tom Hooper
Gail Mutrux
Screenplay by Lucinda Coxon
Based on The Danish Girl
by David Ebershoff
Starring Eddie Redmayne
Alicia Vikander
Matthias Schoenaerts
Ben Whishaw
Sebastian Koch
Amber Heard
Music by Alexandre Desplat
Cinematography Danny Cohen
Edited by Melanie Ann Oliver
Production
companies
Working Title
Pretty Pictures
Revision Pictures
Senator Global Productions
Distributed by Focus Features
Universal Pictures International
Release dates
5 September 2015
(Venice )
27 November 2015
(United States)
1 January 2016
(United Kingdom)
Running time 119 minutes
Country United Kingdom
United States
Language English
Budget $15 million
Box office $1.4 million


The Danish Girl is a 2015 British-American pseudo- biographical drama film directed by Tom Hooper, based on the 2000 novel of the same name by
David Ebershoff .  The film stars Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe, one of the first known recipients of sex reassignment surgery , Alicia Vikander as Gerda Wegener, Matthias Schoenaerts as Hans Axgil and Ben Whishawn as Henrik.
It was screened in the main competition section of the 72nd Venice International Film Festival , and it was shown in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival .  The film was released in a limited release on November 27, 2015 by
Focus Features . The film will be released on 1 January 2016, in the United Kingdom by Universal Pictures International .


Plot
In mid-1920s Copenhagen , the portrait artist Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander ) asks her husband, popular landscape artist Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne), to stand in for a female model who was late to come to their flat to pose for a painting she's working on. The act of Einar posing as a female figure unmasks what turns out to be a lifelong identification on the part of Einar as a female, named Lili Elbe. This sets off a progression, first tentative and then irreversible, of leaving behind the identity as Einar, which Lili has struggled to maintain all her life. This takes place as both Lili and Gerda relocate to Paris; Gerda's portraits of Lili in her feminine state attract the kind of attention from art dealers that her previous portraiture had not. It is there that Gerda tracks down art dealer Hans Axgil (Matthias Schoenaerts ), a childhood friend of Einar (Hans had been the first boy that Einar had ever kissed). Hans and Gerda's mutual attraction causes problems as she is navigating her changing relationship to Lili, but his longtime friendship and affection for Lili leads him to play a supportive role for each.
Ultimately, Lili undergoes one of the very first instances of male to female
sex reassignment surgery with the help of Dr. Warnerkos (Sebastian Koch), a two part procedure that first removes Lili's external genitalia and then, after a period of recovery, fashioning a vagina. Lili's eagerness to shed the vestiges of her male anatomy leads her to rush the sequence of procedures, and eventually dies of complications from it. The movie ends with Gerda and Hans back in Denmark; a scarf that Lili had worn and had given to Gerda before her second operation. It is taken by the wind.
Cast
Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe / Einar Wegener
Alicia Vikander as Gerda Wegener
Matthias Schoenaerts as Hans Axgil
Ben Whishaw as Henrik
Amber Heard as Ulla
Sebastian Koch as Warnekros
Emerald Fennell as Elsa
Adrian Schiller as Rasmussen