09/11/2006

Danish filmmaker Annette K Olesen’s 1:1 [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (or One to One), launched in Berlin’s Panorama section earlier this year, triumphed at another German film festival last weekend, Lübeck’s 48th Nordic Film Days, where it won three main awards: the €12,500 NDR Film Prize, the Audience Award and the Interfilm Church Prize.

Set on a council estate in a Copenhagen suburb, the film is a contemporary Romeo and Juliet story about two teenagers, a Danish girl and her Palestinian boyfriend. Lübeck’s jury said about the film: “We were particularly impressed by the interweaving of the political and the private. Strong human conflicts are mirrored in complex characters who are skilfully staged. Exemplary situations from the inner life of two families are set in the external framework of a housing estate”. The film is being sold internationally by Trust Film Sales.

Norway bagged two main awards: the Baltic Film Prize for a Nordic Feature Film was awarded to Hans Petter Moland’s Comrade Pedersen and Arild Fröhlich’s Pitbullterje won the Children’s and Youth Film Prize of the Nordic Film Institutes.

Finland received two Special Mentions (from the NDR Film Prize jury for actor Martti Suosalo in Timo Koivusalo’s The Leaning Tower and from the Interfilm Church Prize jury for Aku Louhimies’ Frozen City [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Aku Louhimies
interview: Markus Selin
film profile]) as well as the Documentary Film prize of the Lübeck Trade Unions for Tarja Mattila’s Tobacco Girls.

The Children’s Jury gave its top award to Kasper Barfoed’s Danish film The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar, and a Special Mention to the Swedish film Percy, Buffalo Bill & I [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Anders Gustafsson.

A record number of 19,500 people attended the Nordic film event.