{"id":566517,"date":"2026-07-30T07:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T07:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/566517\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T07:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T07:42:11","slug":"nicolas-winding-refn-died-for-25-minutes-then-found-a-new-reason-to-make-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/566517\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicolas Winding Refn died for 25 minutes, then found a new reason to make films"},"content":{"rendered":"

During a press conference for the premiere of his new film Her Private Hell at the Cannes Film Festival, Nicolas Winding Refn<\/a> shared a startling and deeply personal revelation. A routine examination had uncovered a heart valve leak that was damaging his lungs, and the acclaimed Danish filmmaker was sent for emergency surgery. During the procedure, his heart stopped and he was clinically dead for 25 minutes.<\/p>\n

Refn, 55, eventually emerged from a coma alive. Looking back, he says the encounter with death restored his appetite for life and creativity at a time when both had begun to fade.<\/p>\n

\"\u05e0\u05d9\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc\u05e1<\/a>\"\u05e0\u05d9\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc\u05e1<\/p>\n

Nicolas Winding Refn <\/p>\n

(Photo: AP Photo\/Scott A Garfitt)<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring those two weeks waiting for my surgery, not knowing whether I was going to live or die, I came to realize that I had been given a gift, and that I shouldn\u2019t worry,\u201d he told ynet in an interview. \u201cWhen you come to the realization that you might die, you have to make peace with your life. I had never had a doctor ask me if I had written a will before that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

That confrontation with mortality became part of the emotional foundation of Her Private Hell, a dark thriller that reflects Refn\u2019s own ordeal through its central character, Elle, played by Sophie Thatcher. Elle sets out to find her protective father after he disappears into a gloomy city drenched in neon and covered in heavy fog.<\/p>\n

Her journey is threatened by a terrifying figure known as the Leatherman, a seemingly superhuman serial killer pursuing her and two other women: the pleasure-seeking Hunter, played by Kristine Froseth, and the seductive Dominique, played by Havana Rose Liu, who is also Elle\u2019s stepmother.<\/p>\n

Moving between her fractured inner world and an equally nightmarish reality, Elle is forced to face her fears alone. Her imagined protector is Private K, played by Charles Melton, a military veteran trying to rescue his own daughter from the same monstrous figure.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the story of a young girl whose lover marries her father and becomes her stepmother, and then, as a stepmother, takes her father away,\u201d Refn said. \u201cIt is highly dramatic, almost operatic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTrapped in this situation, she fantasizes about the father she will never have: Private K. He is a protector figure who is going to help bring back a daughter who has been taken by a monster called the Leatherman, a monster she was introduced to through a fairy tale told by her own father.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s twisting plot invites psychoanalytic readings about fathers and daughters, abandonment, identity, sexuality, primal desire and survival. But for Refn, the idea of a private hell is broader and more personal.<\/p>\n

\u201cA private hell can be many things,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is the sense that everything you consider sacred has been taken away from you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThematically, those ideas are very compelling because, like a fairy tale, the film can be read in many different ways, especially when it comes to the relationship between daughters and fathers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Refn said the film is also his own story \u201cin a sense.\u201d During his health crisis, he went through what he described as daily cycles of grief, anger, frustration and fear.<\/p>\n

Before then, he had regarded himself as almost invulnerable, \u201clike the bionic man.\u201d Facing the possibility of death forced him to reconsider how he had lived and how he wanted to spend whatever time remained.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter my health scare, I realized I\u2019ve lived my first 50 years, and I want to spend my remaining years being completely free,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I mean completely free, free of ego, vanity and external expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTrue pleasure in the creative process only comes with total freedom. Working creatively is when I feel alive. The finished product is just something for the audience to consume and run with.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy actual existence is tied to the process of making. To get the full satisfaction out of that, I have to free myself from categories, boxes and even the concepts of winning and losing. Those are obsolete to me. I am beyond competition. I only care about being true to myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Refn\u2019s brush with death also led him to reassess his relationships with his wife of 30 years and their daughters, Lola and Lizzy Lou.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made my peace with my wife of 30 years,\u201d he said. \u201cMy eldest daughter was old enough to step into her own world and live her life without me. But my youngest, Lizzy Lou, was still too young to lose her father.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a parent, you feel you must be there to protect them. That anxiety became Private K.\u201d<\/p>\n

The character belongs, Refn said, to the same lineage as the violent and enigmatic antiheroes who populate his earlier work: Mads Mikkelsen\u2019s warrior in Valhalla Rising, Ryan Gosling\u2019s stunt driver in Drive, Julian in Only God Forgives and Miu in Copenhagen Cowboy.<\/p>\n

Private K, however, emerged directly from Refn\u2019s fear that he might no longer be present to protect his younger daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs fathers, we all live with the pain of feeling like we are never good enough, never there enough, or lacking the tools to protect our children,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery parent struggles with that, but especially fathers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is why men tend to get so much satisfaction from watching other men use violence to protect innocence. It temporarily relieves our own feelings of inadequacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Refn described Her Private Hell as a kind of reverse engineering of Only God Forgives.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat film was about the mother-son dynamic and a mother devouring her son,\u201d he said. \u201cThis film is about a father leaving his daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of that abandonment, she imagines the ultimate superhero father who will go to hell and back to save her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Refn built much of his reputation on films centered on highly masculine, dominant and often brutal men, including Mikkelsen in Valhalla Rising, Tom Hardy in Bronson and Gosling in Drive.<\/p>\n

That direction changed with The Neon Demon in 2016, starring Elle Fanning as a young model swallowed by an industry obsessed with beauty, youth and predation. Her Private Hell continues that shift, placing a young woman named Elle at the center of another stylized and threatening world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really enjoy working with female protagonists,\u201d Refn said. \u201cWhen I work with male alter egos, they often function more like set pieces. They are part of the experience, but they aren\u2019t the experience itself. They serve a function.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Elle<\/a>\"Elle<\/p>\n

Elle Fanning in The Neon Demon<\/p>\n

After his health crisis, Refn knew he wanted to return to the territory he had explored in The Neon Demon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved making The Neon Demon and working with Elle Fanning and the rest of the cast,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I returned to filmmaking after my health scare, I knew I wanted to do more of that and explore further.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI love photographing it, dressing it up. It\u2019s my own version of playing with dolls.\u201d<\/p>\n

That idea runs throughout Her Private Hell. Its people and objects are presented like toys, carefully dressed and arranged, while even Private K is designed to resemble an action figure displayed in a box.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lot of iconography in this film tied to objectification,\u201d Refn said. \u201cPeople and objects are treated like toys. They are dressed like dolls, they look like dolls and they wear doll-like things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven Private K is designed to look like an action figure in a box with a utility belt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Refn is himself a toy collector, an obsession he links to his desire to preserve a sense of childhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt stems from a desire to never truly grow up,\u201d he said. \u201cThat youthfulness keeps me mentally young and reminds me to have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Military imagery also occupies a prominent place in Her Private Hell, particularly through Private K and his carefully constructed uniform.<\/p>\n

Refn said his attraction to that imagery is rooted in one of the few regrets of his life: avoiding Denmark\u2019s roughly yearlong military service when he was younger.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always had a fetishization of the military uniform, probably because one of the few regrets in my life is that I never joined the army,\u201d he said. \u201cI always felt I should have spent a year in the military, but I never did. All of those personal reflections played into the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those reflections sit alongside the film\u2019s exploration of objectification, self-image and the possibility of retaining a unique identity in a world where people are styled, exchanged and consumed like objects.<\/p>\n

For Refn, that tension also reflects his position as a filmmaker with one of the most recognizable visual signatures in contemporary cinema, working in an industry often driven by formulas and repetition.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s not categorize human instincts,\u201d he said. \u201cLet them exist on their own terms. A gaze is a gaze. It crosses political and cultural boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u05de\u05ea\u05d5\u05da<\/a>\"\u05de\u05ea\u05d5\u05da<\/p>\n

Refn argues that art can bridge divisions that politics, technology and the circulation of information repeatedly fail to overcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cArt is the only format that can bring the most chaotic situations to a state of peace,\u201d he said. \u201cWhile information serves to stabilize society by creating a baseline of understanding, things inevitably blow up again. Art, however, is the only element that can functionally bring us together collectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can come from entirely different parts of the world, hold entirely different beliefs and even be sworn enemies, but there are still certain artistic expressions we can enjoy together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t come from politicians or the billionaires who control technology and the flow of information. It\u2019s as simple as drawing a picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must always remember that art is sacred. It is a sacred format. Therefore, art always wins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether Israelis and Palestinians might simply need to watch Her Private Hell together in a movie theater, Refn embraced the idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is an experiment I would love to try,\u201d he said. \u201cI would gladly fly to Jerusalem and sponsor that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be there to say, \u2018Guys, let\u2019s just take it easy. Just sit here for two hours together. You can do whatever you want afterward, but for two hours, you\u2019re just going to sit here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m all for that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During a press conference for the premiere of his new film Her Private Hell at the Cannes Film…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-566517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}