the beautiful Darkness of Johan Renck

“I’m Swedish. Sweden is famous for its melancholia.”

Director Johan Renck finds life in the shadows. His moody sensibility has found its approach into style classified ads, track movies, television, and movie with such clients as Armani, David Bowie, and Breaking dangerous.

He’s now utilized that tone to The remaining Panthers, a trans-European crime drama inspired via the global ring of jewel thieves often called the crimson Panthers, their conspiratorial alliance with the banking trade, and the forces that attempt to stop them. The six-section collection—created by way of Jack Thorne and starring Samantha Morton, John Burt, and Tahar Rahim—premieres tonight on SundanceTV.

“I’m drawn to the dark but no longer the nihilistic components, the relentless components, of darkness,” says Renck. “For me, it’s about beauty. in order for something to be stunning, it has to have a dark part, or else it’s simply beautiful.”

“It’s about finding layers under the outside, persona weaknesses, and flaws,” he provides. “That’s when the darkness starts to come out.”

The last Panthers used to be shot like a film, over 120 days, after which built into six parts, with the late David Bowie providing opening music. “Blackstar,” the first single from Bowie’s ultimate album of the same name, used to be at the start written as the theme music for the sequence. Renck additionally directed the music movies for each “Blackstar” and “Lazarus.”

“What you’re keen on about him is his craft,” says Charlie Collier, president of AMC and SundanceTV. beyond Breaking unhealthy, Renck has additionally directed AMC presentations The strolling useless and Halt and seize fire. “these displays are rather various and require a variety of skill, working out, and discipline. I was stunned to hear him say that he’s directed in languages he doesn’t discuss. however i believe that shows how intuitive he is about the human situation.”

lifestyles as a Palette

Renck grew up in a family of doctors and artists, and has crafted a profession mixing innate technical and intuitive talents. His father, an anesthesiology professor, shuttled his domestic through houses round Europe, Kuwait, and Miami. so much of this historical past knowledgeable his directing style.

“I developed an enormous curiosity and cultural consciousness from that experience,” says Renck. “All creation requires a scientific brain. In filmmaking, the director is literally doing a dozen jobs directly—psychologist, dad or mum, photographer, storyteller, technician—I wouldn’t be capable to figure out easy methods to do a super shot if I didn’t have the data of how one would go about doing that [on a technical level].”

“one of the vital issues i like about my job is the cornucopia of different professions in a single,” he adds. “it’s a must to be aware the method to keep in mind the artwork. to say, ‘This gentle is gorgeous. How am i able to toughen it?’”

Renck’s old flame used to be pictures, which he’s honed from childhood and nonetheless posts on Instagram, before turning to track as Stakka Bo, scoring a hit European dance single “right here We Go” in the mid-’90s. to save money, he leveraged his images talents to making the band’s movies.

“I started doing them for friends, and came upon I cherished that greater than the music,” he says. “Then Madonna referred to as . . . “

That was in 1998 to do the video for “Nothing actually matters,” which result in commercial work for Nike, Armani, and Fendi. “I used to be immediately within the sizzling zone, so I made up our minds to use promoting and music movies as film college, as a result of i needed to do drama.”

His work on the 2006 movie Downloading Nancy acquired him to the Sundance film festival and attention of Breaking bad creator Vince Gilligan, who tapped Renck for three of its seasons, opening the door to his television directing occupation.

His photography still informs his cinematic work. “I’m now not focused on who the DP is, as a result of I’m so in regulate of the photographic aspect of the movie,” he says. “I construct the photographs and come to a decision on where the sunshine is going to be.”

next up, he’ll direct the Hulu collection slumber, about storefront psychics. “My oldsters mentioned, ‘make sure you to find one thing you can do you can be enthusiastic about,'” he says. “everything I’ve executed has been intuitive. I went for things that me, now not for the glory or the riches. I regarded for the method [that] I might submerge myself in and thrive.”