NORTHERN LIGHTS 2011

Cinema House, Euro Cinema, The Red House and Dada Cultural Bar

07.04 - 17.04.2011

CLICK HERE FOR THE PROGRAMME

The third edition of Northern Lights, the festival for North European cinema from Scandinavia and the Baltics, opens on April 7 at the Cinema House with the Danish film “Little Soldier,” nominated for the Golden Bear Award and recipient the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlin International Film Festival. In the 11 days that follow, in the Cinema House, Euro Cinema, the Red House for Culture and Debate and Dada Cultural Bar, audiences will have the chance to see a special selection of films from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, and – for the first time as part of the festival, films from Latvia and Iceland.

 Little Soldier

Norwegian cinematography is most widely presented at the festival. Young director Erik Poppe’s “Troubled Water” focuses on a mother who loses her child and a young man who turns into a murderer. In their attempts to come to terms with the past and their own fate, they discover they have to accept the characters they have become and at the same time find a new route to love. Bulgarian audiences know Poppe for his previous film “Hawaii, Oslo” which is Norway’s most successful film for 2004.

“North” by Rune Denstad Langlo, on the other hand, is shaping out to be 2009’s most successful Norwegian film. It received the Transilvania Trophy for best film at the Transilvania International Film Festival, as well as the FIPRESCI Prize at Berlinale and the Best New Narrative Filmmaker at Tribeca. It tells the story of ski athlete Jomar, who – following a nervous breakdown, isolates himself in a lonely existence as the guard of a ski park. When he discovers that he may have become a father, he sets on a strange and poetic journey through Norway on a snowmobile. Along the way, he meets other tender and confused souls who show him the lighter side of life.

 North

“Comrade Pedersen” is the 2006 film by Hans Petter Moland that has not yet been shown in Bulgaria, though the director was well received by audiences touched by his warm human stories in “Aberdeen” and “A Somewhat Gentle Man” (shown as part of the last Sofia Film Fest). In 1968 the young Knut Pedersen arrives in Larvik dreaming of a bourgeois existence. But his unrest soon pushes him towards the seductive Marxist-Leninist party AKP and the beautiful Nina, who convinces him that this absurd and utopian idea is in fact conceivable. Here, Moland – very deserving of the Best Director award he received at the Montréal World Film Festival, approaches the already failed totalitarian system with irony and nostalgia and turns into into a parody of itself.

Filled with typical Scandinavian humor, the comedy “Utopia” was directed by several young directors. It tells the story of Lasse, a gas station owner, who spends most of his time rebuilding his old airplane and dreams of flying it. Too busy with the reconstruction, he barely notices the strange events that happen around his station: а cow eats a mobile phone, а lesbian couple looses their child, а blind girl and her brother sell dubious lottery tickets, а man picks up an impertinent young hitchhiker, three girls with engine trouble get help from a pajama-clad man. Each of the situations is a parody, sometimes obvious and other times discreet, of the political parties in the Norwegian parliament, but even if the viewer is unfamiliar with the country’s political landscape, he has plenty of opportunities to laugh out loud. So, it is only appropriate that the film received the FIPRESCI Prize and the Special Prize for Innovation in Memoriam R.W. Fassbinder from the Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival.

Denmark will be presented at the Northern Lights festival with three films, including the opening “Little Soldier,” directed by Annette K. Olesen, whose previous film “1:1” was presented at the festival’s first edition. The new film tells the story of young soldier Lotte, who returns home after another mission abroad completely disillusioned with life. Lotte's unreliable father offers her a job as a chauffeur for his Nigerian girlfriend, the escort girl Lily. Both Lotte and Lily carry invisible scars and are reluctant at first, but a friendship slowly emerges between the two women, and things take an unexpected turn.

 What No One Knows

“What No One Knows” is a psychological thriller by one of the Dogma movement directors, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen. When Thomas’s sister dies in an accident, he discovers that her death may be connected to their deceased father's work in military intelligence. As Thomas embarks on an investigation, he soon finds himself and his family under surveillance by an unknown group of people. Jacobsen is well known for his film “Mifune's Last Song,” a manifest title in the Danish Dogma movement.

Another exceptionally curious title is Lars von Trier’s script project “The Early Years: Erik Nietzsche,” filmed in collaboration with director Jacob Thuesen. It tells the story of the intelligent but in many ways inexperienced shy young man Erik Nietzsche, who is convinced that he wants to be a film director. In the late 1970s Erik is accepted by the Danish National Film School and enters a world of angry unhelpful tutors, weird fellow students and unwritten internal rules. It is likely that the main character is a kind of alter ego of Trier himself, who seeks revenge for the traumas film school inflicted on him.

 Bad Family

The two Finish films in the festival’s program are: the family drama “Bad Family,” directed by Aleksi Salmenperä, known to audiences with his previous film “Man’s Job” from the festival’s first edition, and the touching story “Letters to Father Jacob,” which received many awards from festivals such as those in Cairo, Mannheim-Heidelberg and Palm Springs. The first feature focuses on a painful divorce, after which the father has been bringing up the son by himself while the mother has had the custody of the daughter. Sixteen years later the mother passes away and the brother and sister meet again. The brother has a crush on his sister and rebels against the father, who copes poorly with the situation. An exceptional analysis of family cataclysms, “Bad Family” was deservedly selected at prestigious forums, such as the festivals in Berlin, Karlovy Vary and Durban.

“Letters to Father Jacob” is a story about Leila, a life sentence prisoner who has just been pardoned. When she is released from prison, she is offered a job at a secluded parsonage and moves there against her will. Leila is used to taking care only of herself, so she experiences conflicting feelings when she starts working as the personal assistant for Jacob, the blind pastor living in the parsonage.

 Starring Maja

Simultaneously sad and funny, the Swedish teenage comedy “Starring Maja” treats, delicately and without any clichés, the problems of those who are different in a closed society with established norms. In a hopelessly small town somewhere in Sweden, lives 18-year-old Maja. Her life’s dream is to become an actress. She wants to be the centre of attention, she wants everyone to see her, wants them to see the beautiful human being she is on the inside. Only it’s a little hard to see. Heavily overweight, clumsy and socially inept, Maja struggles to realize her life’s dream during her final term at high school. Alex, who is also “not like the others,” is a ray of light in Maja’s life and the two of them try to overcome prejudices together. “Starring Maja” is Teresa Fabik’s second film and – with its unobtrusive message and genuine understanding of its characters, it is reminiscent of Lukas Moodysson’s film “Show Me Love.”

The Higher Force

The Icelandic feature in the festival’s program is “The Higher Force,” directed by Olaf de Fleur Johannesson. Dynamically and with black humor, the film tells the story of David, who is ashamed of being a debt-collecting thug, believing that he is an ugly duckling about to become a swan. Through an unlikely “guardian angel,” David finds out that life has indeed something very special in store for him. The film was screened as part of independent forums, such as the festivals in Rotterdam and Seattle and serves as a good example of young and cocky cinema, made with a drive, a sense of humor, intelligence and at the same time, with the audience in mind.

The Temptation of St. Tony

Estonia will be presented with “The Temptation of Saint Tony,” Veiko Õunpuu’s second, exceptionally aesthetic black-and-white feature film. The director’s debut, “Autumn Ball” triumphed at Venice in 2007 and opened the second edition of Northern Lights in 2009. The central character Tony, a moderately prosperous middle-class manager, starts to doubt his way of life after the burial of his father. Strange events begin to take place on his uncertain journey towards a clearer conscience and he slowly starts to exclude himself from reality. It seems that he starts to lose everything that was so firmly his: his family, his job, and finally, himself. Õunpuu is an admirer of cinema’s great modernists, such as Antonioni, Pasolini and Bergman, and it shows in each of his film’s shots. In it, he also finally gets the chance to work together with his favorite French actor Denis Lavant, while the Estonian actors are from his own circle of friends. “The Temptation of Saint Tony” was nominated for the main prizes at Sundance, Rotterdam and for the European Film Award and was chosen as Estonia’s foreign-language Oscar nomination.

Beautiful and contemplative, the Latvian “Vogelfrei” attempts to capture the simple, yet quintessential experiences of a single individual in different periods of his life - childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. The four loosely related segments, directed by four directors, form a single interwoven narrative, where each one of the depicted occurrences provides reference points for the others. The film was screened as part of the Rotterdam festival’s prestigious Spectrum program and received all kinds of awards at the 2007 national film festival in Latvia.

 Low Lights

“Low Lights,” one of Lithuania’s latest films, is a romantic road movie. Directed by Ignas Miskinis, the film was shown as part of the official selection at the festivals in Warsaw, Karlovy Vary and Pusan. A film about friendship, “Low Lights” pivots on a love triangle that evolves when two men and a woman take to ritual night driving. Transforming cold urban space into something charged with excitement, the drives provide the hope the trio so desperately needs.

The Northern Lights festival is supported by the embassies of Norway, Finland, Denmark, Lithuania and Estonia in Bulgaria, in cooperation with the film institutions in the respective countries.

The film festival’s partners are the Bulgarian National Radio, Alma Mater Radio, One Week in Sofia and the websites cinefish.bg, sofialive.com, stand.bg, drugotokino.bg and prozekcia.com.