Henrik Ruben Genz (born 7 November 1959 in Gram, Denmark) is a Danish film director. Before becoming involved with film, Genz attended Designskolen Kolding, where he studied graphic design, after giving up on an earlier dream of being a painter. While there, he did some work with video, and a chance meeting with director Arne Bro encouraged him to pursue film as a career. Genz was then accepted into the National Film School of Denmark at the age of 31, graduating after completing the well-regarded short film Cross Roads (Danish title: Omveje, Detours) in 1995. Genz's next work, the short film Theis and Nico (Danish title: Bror, min bror, Brother, my brother), released in 1999, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. He then became involved with the Dogme 95 movement, but was unable to produce any quality work after six months of effort. Speaking later about his difficulty in trying to work under the Dogme restrictions, he described himself as a "visual director" and Dogme as a movement where "the camera follows the [actors] and choice means nothing". In 2003, Genz released his first feature film, an adaptation of the children's book ()