Uprooted from the Ivory Coast and sent to live in Denmark as a child, professional boxing champion Landry “Hardkore” Kore tells the story of his eighteen-year journey from homelessness and family breakdown to international success in an elevated documentary.

When Danish Director Meeto met the boxer a few years ago he knew that the conventional shaky cam athletic profile would do no justice to Kore’s philosophy, intelligence and—as the director describes—his “big heart”.

“This film is an intimate story about Landry and his struggle to create a good life for himself and what was left behind in that quest,” says Meeto. “Beneath the personal story there is a universal tale about what it means to live in this globalized world and what it means to be a man coming from Africa living in Europe.”

This compassionate portrayal of a man suspended between two continents was deftly visualized by cinematographer Jacob Møller. His atmospheric narrative style perpetuates a theme of contrasts—Kore’s past and future, struggle and comfort, the familiar and the unknown—by oscillating between the crisp, bleached tones of the Scandinavian capital and the glistening orange glow of Kore's West African hometown.

“What does it actually mean to be an immigrant?” says the director. “I wanted to put a face and a heart to all the invisible people we only hear about in the news, to give another angle on the immigrant story. In the end, this is a film about a journey; an internal journey as much as a physical one.”