EXCLUSIVE:  The Party Film Sales has unveiled first deals for Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson’s six-part drama The Danish Woman, starring Trine Dyholm as a retired Danish secret service operative who moves to Iceland‘s capital of Reykjavik.

The six-part drama has sold to France and Germany (ZDF-Arte), Sweden (SVT), Denmark (DR), Finland (YLE), Spain (Filmin), Switzerland (RTS) and Australia (SBS).

Icelandic state broadcaster RÚV, which supported The Danish Woman from the development stage, will give the show its broadcast premiere on January 1, with the rest of the episodes then playing on subsequent Sundays through the month and into February.

RTS will follow shortly after with an end-January launch. ZDF-Arte and SBS will broadcast the show in February while SVT will air it in March. DR has set an Easter Sunday (April 5) start date and Filmin is also planning an April release. YLE will air the drama in June.

The Danish Woman is Erlingsson’s first foray into series after award-winning features films Of Horses and Men and Woman at War.

Of Horses and Men  won the New Directors prize at the 2013 San Sebastián Film Festival and the 2014 Nordic Council, while Woman at War world premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week, winning the SACD Award, and was then acquired for a remake by Jodie Foster.

The new series is produced by Marianne Slot and Carine Leblanc at Paris-based Slot Machine, who previously produced Woman at War.

“Slot Machine is an author driven company and we produced this series more like a feature film than a TV series,” they said of the drama.

“We had a very rich and fruitful collaboration with Benedikt producing Woman at War and we wanted to continue the fine work together. Benedikt is a unique voice, and we wanted to give him the creative space he needed to make The Danish Woman. We therefore developed the series within Slot Machine and got RUV Icelandic national television onboard on an early stage with development support.”

It also marks the first time Paris-based Party Film Sales has handled sales on a major fiction series. Its TV department has focused primarily on TV documentaries until now, with past titles including Cinema Through the Eye of Magnum and The Matrix: Generation.

Slot and Leblanc said they decided to work with the company on the show after a successful collaboration with The Party Film Sales’ sister company, distributor Jour2Fête, and its co-heads Sarah Chazelle and Etienne Ollagnier, on the French release of Benedikt’s Woman at War.

The Party Film Sales team said The Danish Woman fulfilled a long-held ambition to develop a TV drama slate.

“The series by Benedikt Erlingsson proved to be the ideal project to launch this initiative. It aligned perfectly with our ambition to bridge our cinema and TV expertise,” said The Party Film Sales co-head Estelle De Araujo and Chazelle.

“The series was created by a director with whom Jour2fête had already collaborated with. Starting with this project felt like a natural and organic progression.”

Billed as a cross between Rambo, Napoleon and Pippi Long Stocking, Dyrholm’s character of Ditte Jensen is a decorated secret station agent, who retires to an anonymous apartment block in Reykjavik.

Her plans to tend garden and a quiet anonymous life are short-lived as her elite soldier mentality and deep-rooted sense of justice kick in.

The Party Film Sales team tapped into its films sales experitise as well as its knowledge of film and TV festival circuit to help promote and sell the film,.

“This positioning allows us to launch the series at different festivals. Not only those dedicated to television, but also major film festivals that include high-end series sections with strong cinematographic identities,” they explained.

“We premiered the first two episodes at Series Mania in March 2025, at the International Panorama competition. In parallel, we were selected for the Buyers’ Upfront, which offers significant visibility to series set for release in the coming year.”

The drama also went to play at the Tallinn Black Night Film Festival and Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

Alongside the announced deals, the company is currently in advanced discussions with Greece, Eastern and Central Europe, and has hopes for North America, the UK and Italy where Erlingsson’s have played to acclaim.

Ahead of the Iceland debut, Slot and Leblanc have high hopes for the show.

“We trust that there is a big audience who is curious and want to be taken by innovative storytelling that surprises and entertain while having a shape view on the world of today and being deeply rooted in its local culture. Just like Woman at War, which has captivated audiences of all ages and continents,” they said.