The most important Danish filmmaker to emerge between the twilight of Carl Dreyer in the early 1960s and the dawning of Bille August and Lars Von Trier in the 80s, Henning Carlsen crafted a series of carefully detailed, often literary, character studies in the 60s, 70s and 80s which reflect his extensive background in documentary cinema.

Involved with the Resistance effort as a teenager during WWII, Carlsen initially planned to become a doctor after the war's end but became entranced by the cinema and by the writings of Eisenstein and Pudovkin. He subsequently joined Minerva Film in 1948,