When Martin’s older brother, Emile Langbarre (Theatre of Violence), decided to become a film director, he had one wish. They wanted me to make a movie about Martin. The Danish documentarian spent years finding the best way to bring his brother to the screen. One day, Martin told Emil that he and his best friend Casper had started a blog to chronicle their search for the perfect 1994 Honda Civic. Thus was born Petrolheads, which had its world premiere at CPH:DOX and was acquired by Verità Films (formerly Syndicado Film Sales) for international sales.
In an interview with Variety ahead of the film’s premiere, Langbeer recalled how Martin was first brought into the family as a five-month-old foster child and eventually ended up joining the family permanently. The problem was diagnosed soon after. “My brother experienced this deep sense of loneliness when he was young,” the director says. “He then met Casper and spoke freely about their feelings for each other. They finished each other’s sentences and spoke in slang of their own making, but sometimes he couldn’t understand what they were saying.”
“There was something about this friendship that I thought was beautiful,” the director added. “They both felt completely alienated from society. They felt discriminated against because people thought they were weird and they were refused entry to auto shops. They shared a warm friendship despite an underlying sense of being different. I really wanted to make a film about that.”
Verita Film founder Greg Rubidge says “Petrolheads” is “much more than just a car movie.” “This is a deeply moving and often funny human story about the search for a sense of belonging. It reminded me of how cars brought fathers and sons together when I was a child, and of the plucky Civics driving around Toronto neighborhoods years later. Emil Langbert captures Martin and Casper’s most vulnerable moments with remarkable dignity. We’re thrilled to bring their journey to audiences around the world.”
“Petrolheads” chronicles the friendship of Martin and Casper as they roam car shops, scrapyards, and numerous forums in search of Martin’s dream car. But their relationship faces major challenges when Martin spirals into drug addiction, racks up debt, and becomes estranged from his loved ones. However, incorporating that element was not originally planned.
“When I started making movies, my brother had never used drugs or liked alcohol,” the director explains. “Then, when the financing was in place and we were about to start filming, all of a sudden he became addicted for the first time. It was shocking. At first they were hesitant to include it in the film, but Martin and Kasper quickly said otherwise and talked about how Denmark and the Danish media environment had only given us pleasant portrayals of people with disabilities.”
And here lies one of the great praises of this moving Danish documentary. It is a refusal to portray the two subjects within the narrow confines of their disability. Langbeer doesn’t spend much time thinking in detail about Martin or Casper’s specific diagnoses or exploring how it affected their lives growing up. “Petrolheads” finds two men speaking openly and honestly about their sorrows and joys, their flaws and traits.
“We both said from the beginning that this film needed honesty and edge,” the filmmakers say. “They said it’s not funny to feel different after this diagnosis and that we need them to understand that. It was also important for my parents, because they’ve struggled all their lives to ensure my brother had the best life, and they’ve seen all of his struggles. They also said we don’t need to bring it to the surface.”
“Theatre of Violence”, provided by CPH:DOX
No stranger to nuanced depictions of marginalized communities, Langbeer has made films about relationships between a couple with Down syndrome (The Couple), a black barbershop in the Danish suburb of Vorsmose (Qs Barbershop), and a child soldier in Uganda (Theatre of Violence).
“My mother was a school teacher in an underprivileged area of Denmark, and she had a lot of vulnerable students,” the director recalls. “Sometimes she would take the kids home on the weekends, and that’s how she ended up raising my younger brother. Our house was full of immigrant kids and different kids, and I remember everyone teaching me all kinds of things. It was a great way to grow up.”
However, as she got older, Langbert began to feel that “the same people were portrayed in the media in a very negative way, without any depth or nuance.” This experience made the director realize the power of documentary filmmaking. “The most important thing for me when making and watching documentaries is the idea that documentaries can actually change the way you look at people. This is something I’ve experienced myself.”
“I hope that my film can do that in a sense, but this may be a naive hope,” he added.
The director says the film’s visual style and structure was directly influenced by spaghetti westerns and the works of Sergio Leone, as well as contemporary directors who have used the genre to explore the nuances of male friendship, such as Kelly Reichardt’s The First Cow and Joachim Trier’s Reprise. The documentary deliberately brought composer Björn Olsson, known as the “Danish Ennio Morricone”, into the project. “I saw Martin and Casper as two modern-day cowboys or outlaws, two guys taking on the world.”
Premiering the film in his home country was special for Langvall, and in the process fulfilled another of Martin’s dreams: screening it in Copenhagen’s stately Grand Theater cinema. “It was very important for Martin to have the premiere in this cinema in Copenhagen, because that’s where I took a friend to his premiere over 10 years ago. Since then, Martin has said that if we make a movie together, it needs to be premiered there. We’re going to drive his car to the front of the theater, roll out the red carpet and have a blast.”
“Petrolheads” is produced by Julie Frijs Walenciak and Claes Hedlund of Paloma Productions. Verita Films will be in charge of sales.
