27/03/2006

Swedish director Kristina Humle and her first feature Love & Happiness triumphed at the 19th Nordic Film Festival in Rouen, which ended Sunday.

Produced by Memfis Film, in co-production with Film i Väst, SVT , Zentropa and Nordisk Film, the film won the 2006 Grand Prize and also picked up the Best Actress Award for leading actress Henna Ohranen, who plays Minna, a young girl seeking love affairs in a small Swedish town.

The other big winner at the event was Manslaughter [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Danish filmmaker Per Fly (see news), which picked up the Audience Award and Best Actor for Jesper Christensen. Produced by Zentropa with, among other partners, Memfis Film, Sigma Films and Norwegian company Spillefilmkompaniet 41/2, the third instalment of the filmmaker’s trilogy (following The Bench in 2000 and Inheritance in 2003) was screened in competition at last year’s San Sebastian Film Festival.

These prizes are the continuation of a long line of awards, which includes 3 Roberts (Danish Oscars) and the prestigious Nordic Film Prize, for the runaway success at the local box office in 2005, with 400,000 admissions.

Also among the prize-winners at the festival, which screened 70 features, was Next Door by Norway’s Pal Sletaune (see review), which won the Young European Audience Award.

Scandinavian films arriving shortly on French screens include Christoffer Boe’s Allegro [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (to be released April 19 by Celluloid Dreams), Aksel Hennie’s Uno (May 10, Haut et Court) and Anders Thomas Jensen’s Adam's Apples [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anders Thomas Jensen
interview: Mads Mikkelsen
interview: Tivi Magnusson
film profile] (June 6, EuropaCorp. Distribution).

(Translated from French)