28/04/2015 - The Nordic countries collected nine awards, including Best Feature for Dagur Kári’s Virgin Mountain and Best Documentary for Camilla Nielsson’s Democrats

Icelandic director Dagur Kári’s Virgin Mountain [+see also:
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Launched at a Special Gala at the Berlin International Film Festival, Virgin Mountain stars Jónsson and Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir in the story of Fúsi, a man in his 40s who sleepwalks through the mundane routine of everyday life, until encounters with a vivacious woman and an eight-year-old girl force him to make changes. The film was produced by Baltasar Kormákur and Agnes Johansen for Iceland’s Sögn/RVK Studios, with Denmark’s Nimbus Film.

In the same section, Danish director Jeppe Rønde’s Bridgend [+see also:
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Scripted by Rønde, Torben Bech and Peter Asmussen, Rønde’s first feature after a series of award-winning documentaries follows Sarah, who moves with her policeman father to Bridgend in South Wales – a former mining town where 79 teenagers committed suicide over six years. Why? There is no final answer given in the Michel Schønnemann and Malene Blenkov production for Blenkov & Schønnemann Pictures. 

Danish director Camilla Nielsson’s Democrats [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which bagged two prizes at the Copenhagen International Film Festival CPH:DOX, was awarded for Best Documentary Feature in the World Documentary Competition ($25,000). In Henrik Veileborg’s production for Upfront Films, she follows the inner circles of politics for three years in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, describing how the country got its new constitution. 

Finland and Sweden returned from New York with prizes in the short-film competition – Listen, by Finland’s Hamy Ramezan and Rungano Nyoni, won for Best Narrative Short ($5,000), and Catwalk, by Swedish director Ninja Thyberg, received the Student Visionary Award ($5,000). 

Having already been honoured in Hong Kong, Saguenay-Canada and Tampere, Listen takes place at a police station in Copenhagen, where a foreign woman, wearing a burqa, is filing a complaint for domestic violence. However, the translator seems unwilling to report what she is saying. 

In Catwalk, Thyberg follows nine-year-old Ella at elementary school – her classmates are either playing in the schoolyard or reading fashion blogs in full adult dress. Ella wants to take a step into the world of fashion and style, but her parents refuse to buy her new clothes.