After the success of the debut Scandinavian Film Festival last year, the 2015 program, screening at Palace Byron Bay Cinema from July 17-23, will showcase eleven of this year’s most exciting Scandinavian dramas, comedies and thrillers. (Plus Verandah Magazine has three double-passes to a session to give away…just put a comment in the FB box below, or on our FB page.)
The festival opens on Friday July 17 with the uproarious Here is Harold (Her er Harold), a Norwegian road movie about a man who sets out to kidnap the founder of Ikea. For over 40 years, Harold has been running a successful business, ‘Lunde Furniture’. But this comes to an end when IKEA decides to open a new superstore right next door to his small furniture shop. In mounting anger and desperation, Harold wants revenge. He arms himself with a pistol and sets off for Älmhult, Sweden, in order to kidnap his nemesis – the founder of IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad. But unfortunately, Kamprad is quite happy to be kidnapped!
Amanda Adolfsson’s haunting debut feature Young Sophie Bell
From Sweden, Young Sophie Bell (Unga Sophie Bell), screening on Saturday 18th is Amanda Adolfsson’s debut feature, and the second film to come out of Stockholm Film Festival’s scholarship for female directors. In this drama inspired by The Virgin Suicides and My Summer of Love, two university friends move to Berlin after graduating, but their dreams are shattered when one suddenly and mysteriously disappears.
Based on a series of Finnish radio plays, The Grump(Mielensäpahoittaja) is a broad satire from director Dome Karukoski (Heart of a Lion) who returns to the comedy-of-bad behavior mode of his 2010 box office hit Lapland Odyssey. The film tells the story of a set in his ways 80-year-old farmer from rural Finland, who raises hell when he is forced to move in with his city-dwelling son. The Grump screens on Sunday 19th.
Grimu Hakonarson’s Rams (Hrutar) won Un Certain Regard section at Cannes Film Festival.
The Festival also the Australian premiere of Grimur Hakonarson’s Rams (Hrutar) which was awarded the top prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. Cannes Jury President Isabella Rossellini said Grimur Hakonarson’s film was being honored for “treating in a masterful, tragicomic way the undeniable bond that links all humans to animals.” Applauded for its wonderfully wry, understated comic moments, Rams centres on two brothers from a remote Icelandic farming valley who haven’t spoken in 40 years, but have to come together in order to save what’s dearest to them — their prize-winning flock of sheep.
Named by Variety as one of the ‘Top 10 Europeans to Watch’, Norwegian Writer/Actor/Director Ole Giæver brings us Out of Nature (Mot nature) a commentary on middle-class life and the Norwegian penchant for idealizing nature. With a wry Scandinavian sense of humor, Out of Nature is a sharp and compelling film about a put-upon salary man who seeks spiritual and sexual renewal in the great outdoors. Out of Nature screens on Sunday July 19.
Danish thrillers have certainly captured attention in recent years. In The Absent One (Fasandræberne) , the sequel to smash hit The Keeper Of Lost Causes, a troubling affair involving a double murder of twin siblings is reopened by the Copenhagen cold-case division after the children’s’ father commits suicide. The Nordic noir mystery switches between the past and the present as it uncovers what really happened in the 1990s at one of the country’s poshest boarding schools. The Absent One screens on Sunday July 19.
![ScandiFF_300x600_Harold[1]](https://www.verandahmagazine.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ScandiFF_300x600_Harold1.jpg)
Verandah Magazine has three double-passes to a session to give away…just put a comment in the FB box below, or on our FB page.
For info on all the festival films and screening dates, go to ScandinavianFilmFestival or pick up a program at Palace Byron Bay Cinema.
The opening night film will be followed by a party with live music, drinks and Nordic treats.
