Vi overlevede Krudttønden

What Is the Series About?

*Vi overlevede Krudttønden* — translated roughly as We Survived Krudttønden — is a Danish documentary produced by DR and broadcast on DR2, available to stream on DRTV. The film centres on five eyewitnesses who were present at the terrorist attack on Kulturhuset Krudttønden in Østerbro, Copenhagen, on 14 February 2015. Rather than reconstructing the attack from a law-enforcement or judicial perspective, the documentary takes a survivor-centred approach, following the five individuals in the years after the shooting and exploring how fear, shame, and anger have continued to shape their lives.

A notable element of the production is the inclusion of unique footage shot by photographer Peter Bak in the minutes immediately after the attack — raw, contemporaneous material that anchors the survivors' testimonies in the chaos of that Valentine's Day afternoon. The five witnesses also appear as members of the so-called Krudttøndegruppen, an informal support group they formed after the attack and which was still meeting at the time of filming.

The Case

The attack covered in the documentary was the most lethal terrorist incident on Danish soil in decades. On the afternoon of 14 February 2015, 22-year-old Omar El-Hussein arrived at Kulturhuset Krudttønden in Østerbro, where a free-speech event was taking place. He opened fire in the venue, killing documentary filmmaker Finn Nørgaard and wounding several police officers before fleeing the scene.

Later the same evening, El-Hussein continued his attack at the Great Synagogue in Krystalgade in central Copenhagen, where a bat mitzvah celebration was under way. He shot and killed Dan Uzan, a Jewish community volunteer serving as a doorman for the event, before once again escaping. In the early hours of 15 February 2015, Danish police located El-Hussein in the Nørrebro district. He was shot and killed during the confrontation, meaning he faced no criminal trial and received no judicial sentence.

The broader terror investigation that followed focused partly on El-Hussein's background and radicalisation, and partly on those around him. More than a year after the attacks, Copenhagen City Court prosecuted four men on charges of having assisted El-Hussein after the Krudttønden shooting. The verified sources available do not confirm the final verdicts in that assistance case.

The attacks sent shockwaves through Danish society and reignited debate about domestic radicalisation, security at public cultural events, and the protection of Jewish institutions. Survivors and witnesses described a scene of sudden, disorienting violence — a detail reflected directly in the documentary's title and framing.

Production

The documentary was produced by DR, Denmark's national public broadcaster, and aired on DR2. It was listed on the DRTV platform with a 2019 date, though some platform metadata also references 2018, suggesting post-production and broadcast may have straddled the two years. The director is not credited in the available sources.

The production's access to the Krudttøndegruppen — the informal survivors' collective — appears to have been a central editorial asset. The group's willingness to speak collectively, combined with Peter Bak's footage from the immediate aftermath, gives the film primary-source material that more conventional true crime reconstructions typically lack. DR's own coverage of the survivors emphasises that the witnesses continue to process the event years later, suggesting the film was conceived as a long-form human document rather than a straightforward crime chronicle.

The documentary is distinct from the later dramatic feature film Krudttønden (released internationally as The Day We Died, 2020), which critics described as a sober and unsettling dramatisation of the same collective trauma. The DR documentary predates that feature and takes a non-fiction, testimony-driven form.

Reception

Verified audience ratings, critical review scores, and documented controversies specific to Vi overlevede Krudttønden are not available in the sources consulted for this article. The documentary does not appear to have a confirmed standalone IMDb entry; a related IMDb listing refers to Krudttønden — Terror i København under the anthology series Forbrydelser der rystede Danmark, which may or may not overlap with this production.

DR's editorial framing positions the film as an act of public memory and witness testimony. The inclusion of raw post-attack footage and the ongoing group dynamic among survivors suggest the documentary was received, at minimum within Danish public broadcasting circles, as a serious contribution to the record of the 2015 attacks. The broader cultural conversation around the Krudttønden events — sustained by journalism, a subsequent feature film, and continued coverage of the terror assistance trial — indicates that Danish audiences have remained engaged with the human dimensions of the case.

The Case Today

Omar El-Hussein's death at the hands of police on 15 February 2015 closed the direct perpetrator strand of the case permanently. The four men tried for assisting him were processed through Copenhagen City Court, though confirmed verdicts in that proceeding are not available in the verified sources used here.

The cultural venue Krudttønden continues to operate in Østerbro. The Krudttøndegruppen survivor collective, documented in this film, was still active at the time of the documentary's release — a living reminder that the consequences of a terror attack extend far beyond the day itself. DR's ongoing terror coverage has tracked the legal and social aftermath of the 2015 attacks across multiple years, reflecting the event's lasting significance in Danish public life.

For survivors like those featured in Vi overlevede Krudttønden, the work of processing what happened on Valentine's Day 2015 — the fear, the shame, the anger that the film's DR synopsis explicitly names — appears to be a long-term, possibly lifelong undertaking.