08/02/2017 - The Nordic promotional top-financing fund is also backing Baldvin Z's For Magnea and Andreas Dalsgaard's The Great Game

Norwegian pubcaster NRK's new €10.1 million, 8 x 45-minute television series State of Happiness has received half of the Nordisk Film & TV Fond's €800,000 support package for January. Scripted by Nobel writer Mette M Bølstad, from an idea by Maipo producer Synnøve Hørsdal, and directed by Petter Næss (whose 2001 title Elling [+see also:
trailer
film profile] was Oscar-nominated), the series follows four people in a small Norwegian town before the discovery of oil (see the news).

“It is a metaphor for the rise of prosperity in the Western world at the end of the 20th century. It is relevant to a Norwegian audience to see how much of our wealth is built on luck, and to an international audience to see what happens when a few good people decide that the oil should belong to the nation and the people, not just to some random lucky companies or families who happen to be in the right place at the right time,” Bølstad remarked.

The Oslo-based promotional and top-financing fund for film and TV productions from the five Nordic countries also backed Icelandic director Baldvin Z's For Magnea, co-written with Birgir Örn Steinarsson – they previously collaborated on Life in a Fishbowl [+see also:
film review
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film profile] (2014), which toured 50 international festivals and received 12 Eddas, Iceland's national film prize. After two TV films, Baldvin Z will now depict the relationship between two girls, who meet at the age of 15, when they are dragged into a world of drugs, with serious consequences. Twelve years later, their paths cross again. Júlíus Kemp and Ingvar Þórðarson will stage the €3 million feature for Icelandic Film Company, with Finland's Solar Films and Denmark's 41 Shadows. 

In the documentary The Great Game [+see also:
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film profile], Danish director Andreas Dalsgaard (The War Show [+see also:
film review
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interview: Andreas Dalsgaard
film profile]) has hooked up with producer Michael Haslund, as Haslund and his father embark on a trip to find out the truth about their grandfather/father Henning Haslund – an explorer, arms smuggler and secret agent who was allegedly part of an expedition that helped shape modern China. The film, which will be ready in early 2018, is being produced by Haslund Film with Sweden's Mantaray.