Babette's Feast

Babette's Feast
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Gabriel Axel
Produced by	Just Betzer Bo Christensen Benni Korzen Pernille Siesbye
Screenplay by	Gabriel Axel
Story by	Karen Blixen
Starring	Stephane Audran Birgitte Federspiel Bodil Kjer
Narrated by	Ghita Nørby
Music by	Per Nørgård
Cinematography	Henning Kristiansen
Edited by	Finn Henriksen
Production company	Nordisk Film
Release date	28 August 1987 (1987-08-28)
Running time	102 minutes
Country	Denmark
Language	Danish Swedish French
Box office	$4.4 million (US)

Babette's Feast (Danish: Babettes gæstebud) is a 1987 Danish drama film directed by Gabriel Axel. The film's screenplay was written by Axel based on the story by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen). Produced by Just Betzer, Bo Christensen, and Benni Korzen with funding from the Danish Film Institute, Babette's Feast was the first Danish cinema film of a Blixen story. It was also the first Danish film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.

The elderly and pious Protestant sisters Martine (Birgitte Federspiel) and Philippa (Bodil Kjer) live in a small village on the remote western coast of Jutland in 19th-century Denmark. Their father was a pastor who founded his own Pietistic conventicle. With their father now dead and the austere sect drawing no new converts, the aging sisters preside over a dwindling congregation of white-haired believers.

The story flashes back 49 years, showing the sisters in their youth. The beautiful girls have many suitors, but their father rejects them all, and indeed marriage. Each daughter is courted by an impassioned suitor visiting Jutland – Martine by a charming young Swedish cavalry officer, Lorens Löwenhielm, and Philippa by a star baritone, Achille Papin, from the Paris opera, on hiatus to the silence of the coast. Both sisters decide to stay with their father and spurn any life away from Jutland.