The fifth Annual Danish Film Festival is to take place Jan. 22-30 at the High Museum of Art in Midtown.

Sponsored by the Danish-American Chamber of Commerce, the Danish Film Institute and the High, this year’s festival features four of Denmark’s most popular films in 2009.

Gitte Hagensen, a former chair of the Danish chamber, and Linda Dubler, media curator at the High, selected the films for this year’s festival.

“We make a good team,” Ms. Hagensen told GlobalAtlanta. “We look for different things. I look for what speaks to the audience and she looks for the artistic value.”

Ms. Hagensen was a member of the original four-person group that launched the festival in 2006. “There was nothing promoting Danish arts and culture in the Southeast so we decided there was a need for the festival.”

Her only regret about this year’s festival is that a VIP will not be in attendance. Last year, Paprika Steen, a Danish film director and actress, participated.

Later in 2009, Ms. Steen received the Best Actress Award at the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image Film Festival in Mumbai, India, “for her courage and ferocity of her performance in the film 'Applause.'”

In "Applause," Ms. Steen plays an aging actress who struggles to recover from alcoholism and seeks to regain custody of her children.

During a video interview with GlobalAtlanta, Ms. Steen said that her initial time in Atlanta provided her with insights into the U.S. of the 1950s and '60s that she wouldn’t see in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, which she has visited often.

Ms. Steen appears in the film "Fear Me Not," which will be viewed at the High on Jan. 22. The other films to be viewed are "Flame" and "Citron" on Jan. 23, "Take the Trash" on Jan. 29, "Terribly Happy" on Jan. 30 and a children’s film on Jan. 31.

To learn more about the film festival, go to www.daccusa.org.

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