Brigitte Stærmose Mortensen, Ellen Fiske Unveil projects at Scandi Docs Showcase in Cannes

The five selected Nordic documentaries in the final stages of production and looking for distribution, festivals and sales, were pitched by their respective directors and producers at the Scandinavian docs showcase on Saturday.

It was the first time ever the Nordic film institutes were participating in the Cannes Docs works in progress platform.

• Leaving Jesus
  Produced by Michael Krotkiewski and David Herdies for Momento Film, Sweden. Director Ellen Fiske is credited for the Tribeca winning doc Scheme Birds and Prix Europa winner Josefin & Florin. In her new film about faith, she follows a group of Christian ex-fundamentalists who gather at a Journey Free retreat in San Francisco, as they try to free themselves from their communities and to redefine themselves.
  
  “I grew up in a fundamentalist atheist family and felt I lacked religion and spirituality,” explained the director. The film will both follow the participants in their daily lives and their inner struggles.
  
  Leaving Jesus is co-produced by Denmark’s Made in Copenhagen, Norway’s Sant & Usant, and SVT, with support among others from Nordisk Film & TV Fond. The delivery is set for May 2023.

• Children of the Lowest Heaven (Ønskeliv)
  Produced by Lise Lense-Møller for Magic Hour Films, Denmark. The film is directed by Birgitte Stærmose Mortensen (Room 301, Darling, Out of Love), who has worked in recent years on mini-series for HBO Max, Starz and Netflix (The Spanish Princess, In From the Cold, The English Game).
  
  The hybrid doc will pick up the story of the lives of a group of poor kids in Kosovo, captured in her 2009 multi-awarded short film Out of Love, now young adults. “I usually work with fiction, but when I did my short film with kids in Kosovo in 2008, that had a big impact on me”, explained the director who has followed the characters over a 15-year period.

In the film, we see the group of young Kosovar, still fight to survive at the bottom of society in one of Europe’s youngest and poorest nations, where hope is found in religious fundamentalism, or the dream of emigration. It will be a collective portrait of a condition-of life in poverty. “I don’t want the audience to feel pity-it would be an escape”, said the director. “I want the audience to realise that poverty is a life-long condition."

Stærmose Mortensen said her film will be a collective performance piece in an elevating setting, mixing stage, fiction and documentary work. Performance actors will recreate versions of the protagonists to protect the real protagonists’ frail lives. But the true protagonists have a true ownership of the material,” added the director.

The film is co-produced with Sweden’s Vilda Bomben, Norway’s Oslo Pictures and Kosovo’s Kabineti Sh.p.k. Delivery is set for early 2023.

• Punishment (Straff)
  Produced by Ingvil Giske for Norway’s Medieoperatørene (The Painter and the Thief). Established cinematographer Øystein Mamen (Beware of Children,Out of Nature) is making his docu debut with this film set in the high security prison of Halden in Norway, where 250 men are incarcerated and convicted for murder, major drug cases, or violence.
  
  Once a year, a few of them participate in a spiritual retreat for three weeks, living in a ward of the prison temporarily turned into a monastery. Mamen has followed four of them during that experience. The release is set for early 2023.

• Mannvirki
  Produced by Hrönn Kristinsdóttir from Iceland’s Go to Sheep (Lamb), with Epileptic, France. Director Gústav Geir Bollason is a multi-disciplinary artist whose works have been shown at solo exhibitions in Paris, New York among others. This film is an abstract poetic tale and reflection on men’s good environmental intentions often not kept. The film will be delivered in June.

Clout Chasers-Like, Follow and Love Me!
Produced by Oskar Forstén for Polygraf, Finland.
In their docu debut, Krista Maija Heunonen and Krista Moisio will be exploring the use of social media and self-branding as a tool for self-discovery and approval from the generation Z. Atte (20) has 40,000 online followers through branding himself as a party guy, who discusses topics on drug abuse on the web. One morning he wakes up in a pre-trial detention centre and starts to question his need to be admired and the cost of online stardom. At the same time, Jonsu (18) starts cutting Atte out of her life.

The co-directors describe their observational doc as a heart-warming story about people lost in the game of fame. Delivery is set for January 2024.