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FESTIVALS / AWARDS Sweden

Nordisk Panorama Film Festival announces the line-up of its anniversary edition

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- The gathering celebrates entering middle age in style, with its 30th anniversary edition swapping champagne and party hats for taking a closer look at the world

Nordisk Panorama Film Festival announces the line-up of its anniversary edition

Founded in 1990, Nordisk Panorama Film Festival, the biggest film festival for Nordic documentary and short films — organized by Nordisk Panorama and supported by the city of Malmö, Film i Skåne and Region Skåne — will see 14 documentaries competing for the title of the Best Nordic Documentary and a hefty prize of €11,000 in September. Chosen titles will include films that have already generated some heat on the festival circuit, such as Lina Maria Mannheimer’s Mating [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lina Maria Mannheimer
film profile
]
, Carl Javér’s Reconstructing Utøya [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
or Marie Skovgaard’s The Reformist [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
. As well as some new discoveries, including two world premieres: Photographer of War, directed by Boris Benjamin Bertram and dedicated to Danish photojournalist Jan Grarup, who won the World Press Photo award for his coverage of the war in Kosovo, and Iceland’s The Vasulka Effect helmed by Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir — about early video art pioneers suddenly enjoying what seems like a second act of their unusual career.

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It’s not the only award to be given out at this year’s festival. A trophy will also be given for Best Nordic Short Film (€6,000), which will also allow one of the 20 titles to qualify for consideration in the Short Film category of the Academy Awards; the Best New Nordic Voice (€5,000) will be awarded to the most promising Nordic filmmaker; and the Young Nordic – Children’s Choice Award (€1,500) will let youngest viewers have a say. Not to mention the City of Malmö Audience Award (€2,500), waiting for the lucky makers of any of the audience’s favourite Nordic short films and documentaries competing in the main competition programmes.

Opening with the screening of Danish documentary Q’s Barbershop, directed by Emil Langballe, which will surely make fans of the 2002 Ice Cube-starrer very, very happy, this year’s edition puts the spotlight on diversity and inclusion. “We will celebrate our 30th anniversary with exceptional Nordic storytelling touching on diverse topics, from Icelandic video art to Syrian refugees to the #MeToo movement”, explained Executive Director Anita Reher. “Our guest programmers have selected a wide range of films about people and subjects made by talented voices, from equal numbers of female and male filmmakers.” But while intent on celebrating the present, or perhaps the future, the festival doesn’t intend to forget its past and will showcase the best films from Nordisk Panorama’s 30-year library through a dedicated online anniversary campaign.

“I’m so proud to have the chance to program the competition at this year’s Nordisk Panorama with Nadia Abraham”, declared this year’s guest documentary programmer, Hussain Currimbhoy, who previously worked at the Sundance Film Festival. “We asked ourselves: Why this film and why show it now? There are some very talented filmmakers in Scandinavia and they are looking at the world, either journalistically or artistically, in different ways when it comes to their filmmaking”, he added. “There is dedication to craft, real curiosity in the storytelling and humanism at the heart of so many films we saw this year. This is a program of big questions and deep conversations. We hope the audience feels the same.” Luckily, the answer to this particular question will be known already in a month.

Nordisk Panorama Film Festival will take place in Malmö, from 19 to 24 September, 2019. The full line-up is here.

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