23/12/2006

Danish and Norwegian productions continue to prove highly appealing to international festivals, as shown by the latest four Danish and two Norwegian films selected for the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in Utah (January 18-28, 2007).

Fresh from their top awards at Amsterdam’s IDFAs, Pernille Rose Grønkjær's The Monastery [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Eva Mulvad’s Enemies of Happiness will screen at Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition programme.

Produced by Tju-Bang, The Monastery (winner of the prestigious IDFA Joris Ivens Award) is about a man who is turning his castle into a monastery for Russian orthodox nuns. Enemies of Happiness, produced by Bastard Films and winner of an IDFA Silver Wolf Award, focuses on a young Afghan woman running in her country's democratic parliamentary elections.

Both documentaries will compete against 14 other titles, including the Czech-Norwegian co-production On a Tightrope. The film, directed by Petr Lom, captures the daily lives of four children who live in an orphanage in the Chinese province of Xinjiang and study the ancient Uyghur (Muslim minority) tradition of dawaz, or tightrope walking. Norway’s Piraya Film is producing.

The Norwegian feature film Reprise [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Trier
interview: Karin Julsrud
film profile] by Joachim Trier, this year’s Norwegian entry for the Oscars shortlist, will screen in Sundance’s Spectrum section. The 4½ Production is being sold by Nordisk Film International Sales (NFIS) and foreign territories that have bought it so far include Germany (MFA), Austria (Filmladen), Benelux (A Film), Poland (Best Film/Eurocan), Hungary (Budapest Film) and Bulgaria (Vadi Van Kris).

The Danish feature film Offscreen [+see also:
trailer
film profile], screening at Sundance’s New Frontier programme, is also being sold by NFIS and was directed by Christoffer Boe, who attended Robert Redford’s film festival last year with Allegro [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. Offscreen was produced by Alphaville Pictures for New Danish Screen, a DFI production scheme promoting innovation, which also backed the short film Sophie by Birgitte Stærmose, selected in Sundance’s Short film programme.