Nicolas Winding Refn, Esben Weile Kjær & Elias Rønnenfelt - About creativity

Nicolas Winding Refn, Esben Weile Kjær & Elias Rønnenfelt about creativity.
Nørrebro Teater presents a conversation between film director Nicolas Winding Refn, visual artist Esben Weile Kjær and musician Elias Rønnenfelt about creativity.

Magic, sci-fi, romance, pop and punk unite as the three creative Danes jointly explore their different expressions and practices, where they meet and what moves them.

Creativity is put into perspective when journalist and radio host Maya Tekeli asks if you can embrace the commercial without losing its authenticity and core? And how creativity as a primordial force can behave differently, whether it is cultivated in the abstract or in the conventional?

The conversation is in Danish.



Nicolas Winding Refn is a Danish film director, screenwriter and producer and resides in Copenhagen. He began his career with the iconic Pusher trilogy (1996-2005) and has since created a number of films, including Bronson (2008) starring Tom Hardy, Valhalla Rising (2009) and Drive (2011) starring acclaimed American actor Ryan Gosling. For Drive, he received the award for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival. He continued collaborating with Ryan Gosling in Only God Forgives (2013) and later directed the psycho-thriller The Neon Demon (2016). In recent years, Refn has moved onto the television scene with Too Old to Die Young (2019) for Amazon and Copenhagen Cowboy (2023) for Netflix. He is today recognized as one of Denmark's most original, influential and acclaimed filmmakers.

The science fiction thriller Her Private Hell (2026) is Nicolas Winding's Refn's student film and will premiere in Danish cinemas on 5 October 2026.

Elias Rønnenfelt is a Danish musician, solo artist in his own name and the lead singer of the critically acclaimed Danish punk band Iceage. Rønnenfelt lives and works in Copenhagen. He has released several albums in his own name, where he does away with punk and embraces the pop. Rønnenfelt debuted with the album Heavy Glory in 2024 and since Speak Daggers (2025), which features contributions from Jamaican group The Congos as well as Danish Erika de Casier and Fine. His latest EP titled Lucre (2025) has been created in collaboration with British musician Dean Blunt and British producer Vegyn. Iceage has released 8 albums, the newest of which under the title “For Love of Grace & the Hereafter” was released in May 2026. Both Rønnenfelt and Iceage have given concerts all over the world, this summer at Roskilde Festival, South of the Sun and Øya Festival.

Esben Weile Kjær is a Danish visual artist, graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2022 and has also studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. He lives and works in Copenhagen. His practice spans performance, sculpture and installation and often draws on visual languages from youth culture, nightlife, pop culture and the entertainment industry. In his works, he examines desires, collective rituals, identity, and contemporary notions of freedom, among other things. A common feature of his practice is the movement between the live performance and the sculptural object. Weile Kjær's works and performances have been shown internationally at Centre Pompidou in Paris (2022), Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (2024), MMCA in Seoul (2024), ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art in Ishøj (2023) and Copenhagen Contemporary in Copenhagen (2020).

Maya Tekeli is a Danish journalist, radio host and freelance writer. She works for the New York Times and writes for ELLE, among others. She previously worked for Radio24siv, Fribrevet and Jyllands-Posten.