A (Brief) Conversation With Malene Flindt Pedersen (Fat Front)

One of the more unusual topics to be spot-lit at last year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam was the body-positive movement – specifically the “revolution in Scandinavia” that sparked it. Danish doc-makers Louise Unmack Kjeldsen and Louise Detlefsen’s Fat Front – now available on YouTube and Google Play – is the latest film from longtime female-focused producer Malene Flindt Pedersen. It’s a clear-eyed yet fun, upbeat look at four young Nordic women who have defiantly thrown off the oversized mantle of shame, and wholeheartedly embraced the word “fat.” The ladies also proudly display their stomach rolls, and shake their jiggly thighs, for thousands of enthusiastic Instagram followers around the world. 

In addition to premiering in the Frontlight program, Fat Front also arrived at the prestigious fest with an accompanying provocative photographic exhibition presented at Amsterdam Centraal. (Wake up, morning commuters!) And to discuss all this and more I sat down for lunch last fall with the thoughtful co-directors and their dogged producer – who I later followed up with via email – at the Danish Film Institute restaurant SULT while I was in Copenhagen just a few weeks prior to the doc’s international premiere.

To read my interview head over to Hammer to Nail.