Danish cult film ‘Pusher’ and Danish cult brand (di)vision celebrate their impossibly cool collab

Pusher, the first film in the cult-hit Danish trilogy written and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, came out the same year Simon Wick, founder of cult-hit Danish brand (di)vision), was born (1996). Yet, Pusher and (di)vision feel spiritually linked. Perhaps it’s that both revel in the neon-tinged after-hours or that both are inextricably linked to Copenhagen. Or maybe it’s simply that both are impossibly cool.

Whatever the reason, the forthcoming capsule between (di)vision and Pusher, which drops November 14th, feels just right. On Friday, (di)vision and Winding Refn’s production company, byNWR, invited the next generation of Pusher fans to Copenhagen’s Empire Bio to watch a 4K digital restoration of the first film followed by a neon-drenched mingle (complete with Pusher-branded Mikkeller beers, natch).

“There was a strange desire to revisit my past that I chose to indulge in,” says Winding Refn of the project. “At first I was restoring the three films from a maintenance perspective, but then I slowly began to revert to my youth and look at the films in a new light by reintroducing them to my kids’ generation. It felt only natural to do this as these three films continue to reflect both my own generation and theirs.”

It was Winding Refn’s daughter, Lola Corfixen (who also appeared in the director’s Netflix series Copenhagen Cowboy), who first floated the idea of the collaboration (she was instrumental in bringing both the campaign and event to life). Ultimately, Wick settled on making a limited split bomber, with the word “Pusher” printed across the back, for the occasion. He notes that just as the bomber was his brand’s first piece, Pusher was Winding Refn’s first film.

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For Wick, who first saw Pusher at just 10-years-old (“Since I was so young, I didn’t fully understand everything that was happening in the film,” he says. “But it made a huge impact on me”), working with Winding Refn and NWR on this project was a “huge honour”. “The rawness and realism are qualities I've always tried to capture in my work,” says Wick. “I often say that I want my fashion shows to make an impact – like a movie that stays in your mind for days or weeks afterward. Cultural nostalgia is also something I aim to evoke, and to me, nothing captures that feeling more than the Pusher movies.” He notes the just as Pusher captured the "cultural pulse” of its moment, so too does (di)vision feel singularly – and urgently – of its moment.

Though Winding Refn isn’t one to look backwards, he was “pleasantly surprised” upon revisiting the Pusher trilogy, particularly as it had been some time since he’d seen the films. Working on the 4k restoration meant spending an “enormous amount of time” back in that world, ultimately rendering the director impressed with his own work. “It was strange and beautiful to view them from a new lens and then remember the lens in which I originally created them,” he says. “It brought back memories of how lucky I was to make the first one after being given the rare, and blessed, opportunity to make a film at the young age of 24.”

As for why Pusher continues to resonate all these years later, Winding Refn can’t exactly say. “What I do know is that if you create something that is 100 per cent you, then that will never cease to be meaningful,” he says. "And within every generation, you would be lucky if it is experienced again and again. So in that sense, I guess I am still very lucky…”

See all the snapshots from the evening below.