07/04/2014 - The Nordisk Film & TV Fond, which last year supported the making of 60 films, TV drama series and documentaries, has reported a favourable 2013

“Let’s keep this Golden Age going,” suggested managing director Petri Kemppinen, of the Nordisk Film & TV Fond (NFTF), in the annual report for 2013, “which proved to be a favourable year for Nordic films and TV in general, and for the fund in particular, which supported the production of 60 films, TV drama series and documentaries.

“At the same time, the fund implemented the new policy of primarily supporting projects where the forces behind them are individuals or companies that have proved their capacity to produce works of a high quality level for a broad audience,” said Kemppinen in the report, which was published last week (4 April).

The fund’s newly appointed chief emphasised Nordic TV drama, “which has become a hot topic worldwide, in all places where audiences are eager for new, interesting and fresh fiction to feed their viewing appetite.” Nordic TV series including Borgen and The Bridge were hits in the region – the latter took 35% of the pan-Nordic market share, when three million people simultaneously watched the first episode of season two. 

From among the line-up of films backed by the NFTF, he singled out US director Joshua Oppenheimer’s Danish documentary, The Act of Killing [+see also:
trailer
film profile]; Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
film profile], “which had a major impact on box-office figures and discussion aggregators”; and Swedish director Felix Herngren’s The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which took one million admissions during its first two weeks of release.

Besides providing production backing for 28 features, ten TV drama series and 20 documentaries, adding distribution support – totalling approximately €9 million – the Nordisk Film & TV Fond had in 2012 partnered with global VoD platform mubi.com to promote Nordic cinema to a worldwide online audience. The aim of reaching 70,000 film viewings was exceeded by more than 50%, and mubi.com estimated that the campaign created almost 400 million social-media impressions over the 18-month period.