After watching From Above, an intense short film directed, written, and starred by Nicolaj Kopernikus, I realized how powerful art is. Here, the main protagonist barely says a word, yet the short, which is qualified for the upcoming 2025 Oscars, left an emotional impact on me.
What follows is an insightful conversation with Nicolaj, delving into his creative process, his approach to portraying villains, and his vulnerability on screen. Enjoy!
Jaylan Salah: What compelled you to write, star in, and direct From Above?
Nicolaj Kopernikus: Well, that’s a big question. I got inspired by a man who was standing in front of the supermarket [around the corner] every day. He stood there still and looked like he was homeless. And I wondered when I passed him daily; what if I looked at him from another perspective? As if watching him from above. I was curious about his background and his destiny. Why is he standing there?
And then, I started writing this story about a guy who had a family but coincidentally got divorced and maybe had a mental breakdown as well. But the most important thing for me was to show how to observe people from another perspective [in the script]. Therefore, I wrote the movie, directed it, and played the [main] character myself because I was too embarrassed to ask —a professional actor— colleague to [take on the role] and cut all his hair off. [As I decided to play it], I thought, I know how to play this character because I’ve been an actor for 30 years. So why not do everything myself?
Jaylan Salah: There are two layers. You have the emotional layer and the physical layer. There are emotionally intense scenes without talking, and then you have the physical alteration through hair and makeup to aid you. So, which of these tools helps you more as an actor? Your internal feelings and inner conflict or using the physicality of the role—the major changes you underwent— to elevate the performance?
Nicolaj Kopernikus: This is a really good question. The physical thing [in this film] involves him making the transition from a homeless guy to someone cutting all his hair off, putting on a suit, and changing physically. In this case, the difficulty [whether the physical or the emotional work] is a one-to-one thing. It’s like what you see is what you get. In the case of emotions, this is more of an inner work [for me] as an actor.
This is why this film is a 50/50 situation, meaning that I am playing the character emotionally (from an emotional place), but the gift is that you can see this change [physically]. And it’s quite a big transition. It was also fun to cut off my hair because I only had one shot. We had to make sure we got all the material because we couldn’t reshoot [a shaved head] scene, so that was quite fun.
Jaylan Salah: Did you always have the conscious decision for the character not to speak? In the present scenes, not a single word is said, but emotions are conveyed entirely through his facial expressions. Did you always know there would be no dialogue? And why did you decide that?
Nicolaj Kopernikus: You must be precise when you show a character in a film. You have to choose and pick. If you want to tell his background story and similar things, it takes many minutes. This is why I chose to make an opening scene that shows how special a character is. Imagine this father pulling all his clothes from the closet to create an art piece on the floor with his daughter, and the way the wife watches him shows how she’s tired of him. That’s why I wanted to portray a character who, in some ways, exhibits subtle signs of mental instability.
And when —8 years later— this character is homeless, he is no longer able to speak. And every time I tried to give myself a line of dialogue, it made me feel that it would take something away from the character. I wanted him to be [fully encapsulated] in his loneliness and homeless situation. He is speechless, and that means he lost [everything], even his voice. I believe that when you live alone, you can only talk to yourself. Not to mention that the homeless man who originally inspired me for this film never spoke as well. So, it made sense to me to deprive him of words.
Jaylan Salah: There are very vulnerable scenes when you’re under the shower, and your eyes are only doing the talking. We see your moist eyes, but no tears are falling down your cheeks. How do you, as an actor, go through this vulnerability while protecting yourself in your head space? Or do you dive in head first without caring if it wears you down?
Nicolaj Kopernikus: I just dive into it. I mean, acting is an exit. For me, the most wonderful thing about my job is that I can dig into emotions, feel them all, and jump in and out of them.
It is wonderful that this is our job because that [experimenting with emotions] is what we love when we act. But the hard part is to decide how much you are showing or holding back. It’s interesting when I watch movies with massively talented actors, and the thing that emotionally touches me is when I can see that the actor —through the character— is holding back [emotions] in a way. As soon as you burst them out, the feelings are out there, and you have to build them up again.
This is why it’s fun to make short movies —they serve as a tiny window into a single emotion, a specific situation, or a focused plot crafted with precision. I like that.
Jaylan Salah: The short movie is like a slice of life, and the long feature is the whole universe.
Nicolaj Kopernikus: Exactly. And I’m personally interested in looking at life from different perspectives. Even if you are mad or sad, you sometimes have to let time pass so that after a while, when you look at [what happened] from above, you will find that it changed. I believe life could be easier if we look at it from above. Because when you see the whole picture, you deeply understand everything. This is obvious in the scene where he is making this piece of art out of plastic —a massive picture of his daughter when looked at from above, while at a close distance, it appears as a pile of plastic litter. It is an art piece but also a symbol of the film’s message. I believe that we sometimes look at homeless people as if they are pieces of plastic, garbage.. But if you look at them from another perspective —from above— you realize they’ve been living their lives like everyone else but lost something profound. It concerns me how we can be only two steps away from losing it all and ending up in their position. You can have two garages, two cars, a big house, a family, and a good job; then, all of a sudden, you get divorced, lose your job and your money, lose your friends and your family, and become homeless.
This is scary and yet something we have to be aware of and compassionate towards others who lost because we never know if someday we’re going to be like one of them.
The key message I want to share is the importance of connecting with the homeless, talking to them, reaching out to them, and viewing their lives from an empathetic perspective.
Jaylan Salah: You play the villain in [the Danish procedural drama] The Killing, and you play a very vulnerable character here. Which is more fun for you as an actor to play?
Nicolaj Kopernikus: Oh, to be honest, it’s enthralling to play the bad guy. Yeah. I don’t have words to explain why, but one thing I can tell you is that you have to always take good care of your character and defend him in a way. So even if he is the worst person on earth, you have to stand by him. This is what you call “showing mercy for the character,” and that’s the hard part of working with [villains]. But still, it’s more interesting than playing ‘Mr. Nice Guy’. However, I also love to play roles that are full of emotions because it’s a privilege to make a film that touches people. This is true.
Jaylan Salah: What was the most interesting scene for you to play and direct?
Nicolaj Kopernikus: It was a thin line between not being too banal or too sentimental, especially in the ending scene when [father and daughter] are meeting each other. That was difficult. It was also hard to choose the music and imagine how the actors would hold each other. On the other hand, the way he reaches out to his daughter through an art piece made of plastic and how crazy this idea has been was also very important to me. It must be a very wild idea to contain his behavior as a character and also connect to the beginning when his daughter is eight years younger, and they are making an art piece together from clothes.
Another important scene in the film is when the girl finds her boyfriend peeing in my face. Because the way the daughter looks in the father’s eyes [my eyes] is an important emotional moment.
It was a nice journey doing this film. Everybody was so cool about it, and even the child actress who played my daughter at a younger age truly impressed me with her talent. The scene when she was looking at our fight [me and her fictional mom] was so good. She portrayed it beautifully. The only problem would be having to go to the monitor to playback a scene and see what we’ve done since I’m acting and directing at the same time. Luckily, I had a very good DOP, Henrik Kristensen, who took good care of me during the shoot.
However, in terms of the most difficult scene, it had to be the one where I cut all my hair on camera because we only had one shot. But after doing it —because it took a long time to shoot— I felt a surge of adrenaline, but, that was still quite nice.
