It is 2 p.m. on Wednesday 12 February 2003 and an audience of young film talents and cinephiles are expectantly awaiting the arrival of Thomas Vinterberg in the theatre of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) in Berlin. The occasion is the first edition of the Berlinale Talent Campus; for five days the campus offers 500 selected up-and-coming film talents the opportunity to exchange experiences with each other and professionals, meet various organizations and institutions, and show and watch films. Thomas Vinterberg, director of FESTEN/THE CELEBRATION (DK/SE: 1998), will discuss the process involved in developing his new international feature IT's ALL ABOUT LOVE (USA/ JP/SE/UK/DK/DE/NL: 2003) in one of the Script Factory Masterclasses. He is joined by co-writer Mogen Rukov, with whom he also collaborated on Festen. When they enter the auditorium at 2:20 p.m., the audience applauds enthusiastically. Vinterberg performs a Chaplin bow.

IT's ALL ABOUT LOVE is not a Dogme film. Instead, the Dogme rules are reversed. Vinterberg explains how the Dogme rules, which he drew up with Lars von Trier in 1995, provided him with the necessary creative energy for writing and directing FESTEN. In order to maintain this type of inspiration, he felt he needed to make another courageous move: to the extreme opposite side of the manifesto that had made him successful. As a result, the movie is set in the near future (the year 2021); the visual style is inspired by Technicolor and old Hitchcock movies; the New York set was recreated in the film studios in Trollhätten, Sweden, at various locations in Copenhagen, and with the support of digital techniques. Meanwhile, Polish-born composer Zbigniew Preisner, internationally acclaimed for his work with Krzystof Kieslowski, was asked to compose the musical score; and Vinterberg traveled from Scandinavia to Uganda to find the appropriate location. The story follows John (Joaquin Phoenix) and worldfamous iceskater Elena (Claire Danes), a married couple who, on the verge of a divorce, discover that they are still in love. The first couple of minutes of the film are shown in the Script Factory Masterclass.