Film director. Successful and popular director born at Nyborg, Denmark, who worked his way up in the film studios before making his début as a director in 1952. This was the first of his 40 feature films, one of which, “Qivitoq” from 1956, was nominated for an Oscar in the category “Best foreign language film”. His most popular films were the 13 comedies about “Olsen Banden” (The Olsen Gang) from 1968 to 1981. He usually wrote or co-wrote the manuscripts for his films. He was also very active directing for the TV starting with the serial “Huset på Christianshavn” from 1970 to 1977. Of the 84 episodes he himself directed 41 episodes. His by far most popular and lasting work for TV was the serial “Matador” (from 1978 to 1982) from the script by writer Lise Nørgaard. It deals with the lives of two families in a Danish provincial town in the years 1929 to 1947. So far “Matador” has been shown on Danish TV 6 times having furthermore been shown on TV in several other countries including Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain and the former Yugoslavia. (bio by: Erik Skytte)