NT 2011 AND THE WINNERS ARE

The National Film School of Denmark came out triumphant of the 11th Nordic Talents Pitch competition last Friday when the five member jury including former alumna Lone Scherfig handed out the main Nordic Talent Pitch Prize of NOK250,000 to Lea Glob for her Human Female Sexuality documentary project and the NOK50,000 Special Mention to director Milad Alami and producer Stinna Lassen for The Evacuation of Åbyn.
Last time a documentary film collected the top award from the Nordic film schools annual talent pitch event co-hosted by Nordisk Film & TV Fond and the National Film School of Denmark was in 2004 (The Armwrestler from Solitude). “I’m so happy that the top prize was given to a documentary film and our decision was taken unanimously,” said Cecilia Lidin, Documentary Film Commissioner for the Swedish Film Institute who sat on the jury with Danish director Lone Scherfig, Finnish director John Webster, and Norwegian Feature Film Commissioner Thomas Robsam and Swedish producer Lars Blomgren. 

The jury saw in Lea Glob an “especially talented director whose graduation film Meeting my Father Kasper Højhat was touching and beautifully crafted while dealing with a sensitive and difficult personal issue: the re-construction of an unknown father’s real identity after he committed suicide.
Glob’s five minute pitch of her project Human Female Sexuality backed by research material showing a woman freely expressing her intimate sexual desire and bashfully interacting with the camera further helped the five members-jury come to its final decision. “The pitch was convincing, showing promising material and giving the jury confidence that this can be a unique film about what the director calls ‘the best and yet most complicated part of human life,” said the jury’s motivation statement.
The second prize winner Milad Alami had struck the Nordic Talents audience with his 29 minute fiction film Nothing Can Touch Me, featuring a school shooting spree. Just like his graduation film, the director of Iranian origin’s pitching project The Evacuation of Åbyn will be character-driven, focusing on a young girl’s dilemma as she is forced to flee her family and home mining town. The jury issued the following motivation statement: “The Prize is given to a strong creative team with an excellent graduation film that shows a genuine interest in portraying credible characters in a very contemporary context. We believe that The Evacuation of Åbyn has the potential of becoming an original, multi-layered and moving film about finding your true home as the world collapses around you.”
A total of 28 graduation films and 11 pitches entertained the audience of 200+ Nordic industry people who mingled in a relaxed atmosphere with the talents in the making from the National Film School of Denmark, Helsinki Film School at Aalto University School of Art and Design and Stockholm Academy of Dramatic Arts. The two Icelandic pitchers sold Uggaddóttir and Elifur Örn Þrastarson just came out from New York University’s Columbia University’s MFA Film Programme and Prague Film School respectively.
Lone Scherfig who attended Nordic Talents for the first time in between promotional tours for her latest Hollywood film One Day, said she was impressed by the large number of ‘strong new voices’. “The Danish Film School tends to encourage originality rather than copies, and you could find that also in the graduation works from the other Nordic film schools,” she stressed. Also first timer at Nordic Talents, John Webster, director of the award-winning documentary Recipes for Disaster, felt the event was ‘very inspiring’. “What I really liked is that of course, there is a competition, but ultimately, everyone can win at Nordic Talents because all graduates have a chance to meet financiers and producers and to pitch their projects to all the Nordic film industry.”
The Norwegian Film Institute’s Film Commissioner Thomas Robsam praised the quality of the pitches that showed that graduates were ‘focused on storytelling’, but he also pinpointed at the lack of visual material actually used by graduates to pitch their project. “Anyone can be good at selling an idea with words, but showing something with images is quite different. Lea Glob had a few images or research material to show us and that helped convince us of her ability to bring her project together,” he said.
From the graduates’ perspective Nordic Talents was a unique opportunity to have a direct contact with key-representatives from the Nordic film industry. “I didn’t know anything about the industry, and getting such as a warm welcome felt really wonderful,” said the Nordic Talents winner Lea Glob. She also praised the pitch workshop with Karoline Leth that created a special bond between film students, a bond that could very well evolve into future work collaborations. Several Nordic Talent winners have successfully turned their pitching projects into feature length films such as Eric Richter Strand (Sons), Marja Pyykkö (Run Sister Run), and Rúnar Rúnarsson (Volcano). Two recent winners are in production with their feature debuts: the Danish animator Jan Rahbek (Carlo’s Casino) and Sweden’s Karzan Kader (Bekas) silver medallist at the Student Academy Awards 2011.