![Nicolas Winding Refn On ‘Her Private Hell,’ Being “The Happiest Person That Ever Died” & His “Second Phase” Resurrection Into “Post Narrative” Cinema [Interview]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/23135537/Nicolas-Winding-Refn-On-%E2%80%98Her-Private-Hell-Being-The-Happiest-Person-That-Ever-Died-His-Second-Phase-Resurrection-Into-Post-Narrative-Cinema-Interview.jpg "Nicolas Winding Refn On ‘Her Private Hell,’ Being “The Happiest Person That Ever Died” & His “Second Phase” Resurrection Into “Post Narrative” Cinema [Interview]")
Death gave Nicolas Winding Refn something success could no longer provide: a blank page.
By the time the filmmaker behind “Pusher,” “Drive,” and “The Neon Demon” suffered the health crisis that he says briefly killed him, his creative appetite had already burned itself out. The Danish provocateur had made the movies he wanted to make, completed a pair of television projects, and begun moving into installation work. Nothing was calling him back to a film set.
Waking up changed that. Refn had to rebuild his body, but he also found himself detached from his previous understanding of filmmaking. He still possessed the knowledge accumulated across his career, but he could approach “Her Private Hell” with what he called the “arrogance of youth” he had while making his first feature. The film became the opening of his “second phase.”
That reset led Refn toward a fragmented, post-narrative structure inspired by channel-surfing, social media scrolling, and the instant dopamine of disconnected images. He wanted audiences to make their own connections between the film’s experiences. When those pieces needed something to hold them together, Refn turned to veteran Italian composer Pino Donaggio, whose scores include Nicolas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now” and a celebrated run of Brian De Palma films, including “Carrie,” “Dressed to Kill,” “Blow Out,” and “Body Double.” Refn eventually conceived the entire movie as an opera whose music would keep it from collapsing “like a house of cards.”
Presented Out of Competition at Cannes, “Her Private Hell” unfolds in a futuristic metropolis swallowed by a mysterious mist, following a troubled young woman searching for her father, whose path collides with that of an American GI trying to rescue his daughter from Hell. The film stars Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu, Kristine Froseth, Diego Calva, Dougray Scott, Shioli Kutsuna, Aoi Yamada, and Hidetoshi Nishijima (read our review).
In a Playlist interview, Refn discussed the creative freedom he found after death, why success can become a curse, and cinema’s importance as a shared human ritual. He also recalled Donaggio drinking too much wine and impersonating Elvis in Rome, and explained why he finally plans to return to “Maniac Cop” after more than 15 years of false starts.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Before I saw “Her Private Hell,” I wondered what was left for you to explore. Then you made this mysterious, abstract film with two stories converging. What is your relationship with traditional narrative these days?
Narrative is old-fashioned.
How are you doing now after the health crisis you spoke about at Cannes?
Well, it’s a couple of years ago now, so you’re just happy to be alive in ways that you weren’t before. You’re happy that you have a few more minutes to breathe in, and you’re happy that you have another 25 years, hopefully. It’s a cliché, but time becomes a very essential part of your reawakening and coming back. It really all becomes about time.
Did that experience influence “Her Private Hell”?
Well, it wasn’t so much the film. It was more that when I died, it was at a moment when I had nothing left in me to make. I’d done the movies I wanted to make. I had done a couple of shows. I’d begun working in the more installation-oriented spectrum of creativity. But there was nothing left that I really wanted to do anymore. So I was the luckiest person to die, almost as if God had a plan.
When I woke up again and had to bring my body back to life, it was like starting over again. It was like being an infant, in a way, but I had all the knowledge of my past. At the same time, I detached myself from my understanding of life and what I used to make.
If I were to start again, I could start with the same sense of arrogance of youth that I had when I did my first film many, many years ago with “Pusher.” That’s how I approached “Her Private Hell.” I was going to make it exactly how I thought it should be.
Social media and channel-surfing seem to have shaped the film’s structure—let’s call it “post-narrative”
What was interesting to me was social media because I think social media has basically deconstructed formal narrative in ways that are far more exciting. I think the idea of the human brain absorbing instant dopamine is a new way of telling stories. It breeds a more moment-to-moment experience. Longevity becomes different. Length becomes a different scenario.
The idea of making a film that was an amalgam of many things—and all the things I wanted to do at once—was a way of looking at how I discovered cinema when I was young through television. I could click channels back and forth and see instant experiences. They were not connected, but I built a connection within them myself because I kept turning the channel, the same way you scroll through your telephone.
It’s like an addiction to something deeper inside of you that we’re all addicted to. I don’t know what it is exactly. I think it’s this constant desire that we seek in something.
So I thought that if I made a film with the same premise—and post-narrative is a good way of looking at it—there is a post-narrative in the future. The future is far more interesting because it has so many different avenues now. A movie, many years ago when I made films in a more classical way, was very much one thing. But now movies are part of many other things.
In a way, you should look at it as a form of freedom. The conventions are no longer there. On the contrary, now the ideal scenario is to push the boundaries and create with your heart because that is what still resonates. That is what still justifies people spending their time on it. Everything else is like a swipe. It’s effortless.
![Nicolas Winding Refn On ‘Her Private Hell,’ His Personal Resurrection, Starting Over & Why ‘Maniac Cop’ Is Finally Next [Interview]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/23132316/DAY_04_2034-1024x689.jpg)
You presumably still see theatrical cinema as an essential communal experience.
Cinema, to me—meaning going out and seeing a movie—is a very important part of being human. It’s the same as going out and seeing a play, seeing a musical performance, being together, or having dinner together.
All our shops are closing, and more of our everyday lives are coming through other services where we don’t interact as much. As we learned through the pandemic, human beings need human beings, at least the majority of us.
We need to create spaces where we come together collectively. There’s a kind of democracy in art because it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from. We can all share it and experience it at the same level. I think it’s very important to remember that creativity is entertainment, but it can also be something that surpasses desire and becomes a more essential piece of us.
Does “Her Private Hell” represent a new chapter in your filmmaking and your life? Is this a new era for you?
Oh, absolutely. It’s my second phase. I’ve had experiences throughout my life where you could say I was very lucky. I was very lucky to get money very easily for my first film without having anything to show. I was very lucky at certain times later in my career to work with actors or make films that came to me very easily. And I was lucky I died because sometimes you have to be thrown to the wolves in order to rise again.
In creativity, we sometimes forget that success is a curse because we tend to repeat it. Even though it may look glamorous from the outside, inside there’s a sense of emptiness. Creativity is not about being acceptable, in my opinion. It’s about what it feels like to make. Do you feel good? The product, as I always call it, at the end is dead space. But you live in the process of creativity. That’s the dopamine. That’s what you get addicted to.
Doing exactly what you want to do, the way you want to do it, has always been the ultimate living existence to me: to be free, completely free of any inhibition. It’s like taking your clothes off in public and being completely proud of your faults and all the things that are wrong with you. There’s an enormous sense of satisfaction in that.
It sounds like you view what happened to you as a gift.
Oh, absolutely. I’m the happiest person that ever died.
Tell me about the score and working with Pino Donaggio.
“Her Private Hell” was the first movie I made where I didn’t know what it was going to sound like. I didn’t have a musical cue. I played a lot of music while I was making it at different stages, but I didn’t know what it was going to sound like.
Near the end of production, we were very much into the whole hell component, this artificial world that I had built. I began to look at everything like an opera, and I realized I had always wanted to make an opera, so why not this one? It certainly had themes that were very operatic. Once I found that, I needed a composer who understood both film music and opera. So where do you go? Italians do it better. You go to Italy. But all the composers of that notoriety whom we use as inspiration had passed. The only one left was Pino Donaggio.
He hadn’t worked for a number of years, so I contacted him. He didn’t speak any English, and I said, “Listen, you’re not going to live much longer. How about writing your requiem now?” And he was like, “Sì, I’m in.”
He came on board, and I said, “Listen, the thing is this: I’m basically going in, like always, and betting on black. I have one chip, and this chip is going to be the music that ties the entire movie together. Without the music, like an opera, there are just sequences that will fall apart like a house of cards. Everything is going to be about the music.” It was amazing to work with him. I believed he could do it, and he did. He put it all together with a wonderful pink ribbon and handed it back to me.
The most memorable moment I had in the whole process of making this film was sitting in Rome with Pino after we recorded the score and were mixing it. He had a little too much wine, and he started imitating Elvis while singing. I thought, “I will remember this moment for the rest of my life.”
You’re doing “Maniac Cop” next. You first developed it years ago, and then it became an HBO series. How different will the film be from the version you might have made a decade ago, given your resurrection and new approach?
Originally, I was only going to—I mean, I bought the rights to “Maniac Cop” about 16 years ago. Then my friend John Hyams was going to direct it. I had a very specific take on it back then.
Then I was approached by HBO about turning it into a television series, which I happily began working on. The only problem was that HBO didn’t know what “Maniac Cop” was until they read the scripts, and then they started to have a heart attack. Obviously, there was a conflict of interest between us. But I also saw the explosive nature of the themes of the show that I wanted to make because I had to direct it, and that was the deal. So we parted ways amicably; I got all my stuff and some dough, and we were all happy. Then I put it on a shelf, went on and died, came back, and did “Her Private Hell.”
Tom Quinn, who created NEON, really was instrumental in me making a movie because he was like, “What do you need?” I said, “I need this amount.” He said, “Do you know what you want to make?” I said, “Kind of.” He said, “Okay, I’ll guarantee you this if you want to make a movie.”
“Her Private Hell” was made with a sense of luxury. It was like going into a hotel, and I could just play around in the rooms. While I was making “Her Private Hell,” I realized what I needed to do next because, obviously, you’ve got a new sheriff in town in America.
I felt, now is the time to make “Maniac Cop.” Before, it wasn’t the time. It wasn’t in my cards. But now it is, so I’ll shoot that next year.
“Her Private Hell” opens in theaters on July 24 through NEON.
Born in Chile, raised in Canada, now living in Brooklyn, NY, Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2007. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, MuchMusic, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
