The Norwegian Film Institute has awarded NOK6.6m in production support to ten new documentary films. Four of them are co-produced with Nordic partners.

SF Norge received NOK550,000 for Stemmen (‘The voice'), about journalists' freedom of expression and the risk they take when reporting from a country in crisis. The NOK 2.8m project is co-produced with Denmark's Grunnet Film.

Ishavet kjempe (‘The fighter of the ice sea') directed by Adam Schmedes focuses on the black whales in the Arctic Sea. Videomaker received NOK 500,000 towards its NOK10m budget. Loke Film in Denmark is co-producing.

A similar grant was awarded to Freemen, a Danish documentary project about small time gangsters in the Philippines promoted to para-military death squad leaders. The NOK10m project is directed by Christine Cynn and Joshua Oppenheimer (The Globalisation Tapes). Final Cut is producing with Norway's Piraya Film.

Survivors is the new project by Sweden's Magnus Gertten - photo - (Long Distance Love) produced by Auto Images, in co-production with Norway's Kino Pravda. Gertten explores the fate of some 30,000 concentration camps survivors during WW2 who arrived in Sweden in the spring 1945. The NOK4.3m project was awarded NOK350,000 from the NFI.