{"id":492500,"date":"2026-05-19T14:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T14:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/492500\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T14:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T14:35:12","slug":"nicolas-winding-refn-died-due-to-leaking-heart-and-came-back-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/492500\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicolas Winding Refn Died Due to ‘Leaking Heart’ and Came Back to Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDanish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn<\/a> broke down in tears during the Cannes press conference for his new film \u201cHer Private Hell<\/a>,\u201d recalling how he died for 25 minutes three years ago and then came back to life.<\/p>\n

\n\tRefn, who is making his feature film return with \u201cHer Private Hell\u201d after 10 years, said he had given up on movie-making until he faced death. \u201cBefore I died, I had come to the end of my career because I didn\u2019t have anything left in me,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, there was nothing for me to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRefn was told that he had a \u201cleaking heart,\u201d which was \u201cdiscovered by accident.\u201d \u201cSuddenly, I was told that I would probably not live, but if I did they didn\u2019t know what would happen. So, two weeks later I was operated on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe joked: \u201cThank God the surgeon was Tom Cruise and he could fix me with his hands, and then he brought me back to life with electricity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRefn then began to cry as he spoke about the new lease on life the experience has given him. \u201cI realized before I died that I\u2019d been given a gift, I could start over again. Like how many people get a second chance? And I got a second chance from God. And I could use that for good,\u201d he said, with tears streaming down his face.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHer Private Hell\u201d premiered at Cannes on Monday night to a seven-minute ovation<\/a>. The horror-thriller stars Sophie Thatcher<\/a>, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu, Kristine Froseth, Dougray Scott, Diego Calva, Shioli Kutsuna, Aoi Yamada and Hidetoshi Nishijima. <\/p>\n

\n\tA neon-tinted fever dream, \u201cHer Private Hell\u201d stars Thatcher as a tortured movie star who must confront her daddy issues when her best friend marries her father. At the same time, a mysterious presence \u2014 known only as the Leather Man \u2014 and an Army private (Melton) seeks vengeance after his own daughter goes missing. <\/p>\n

\n\tLater on in the conference, Refn was also asked for his thoughts on AI, a topic which has dominated this year\u2019s Cannes. Refn said that he isn\u2019t opposed to using it as as tool for creativity, and teased its involvement in a future project.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHaving now tried it on something later on that may show here, I really love the creativity. For me, it\u2019s like a brush,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd obviously, no one really knows all the implications of what this is going to do and what\u2019s going to happen, but from the perspective of creativity it\u2019s a new invention. And then it\u2019s what you\u2019re going to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Danish auteur Nicolas Winding Refn broke down in tears during the Cannes press conference for his new film…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[11519,434,18,117,214171,19,17,214172,200999],"class_list":["post-492500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-celebrities","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-her-private-hell","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nicolas-winding-refn","tag-sophie-thatcher"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}