Nordic filmmakers Virpi Suutari and Victoria Verseau grab awards at Cannes Docs

The Al Jazeera Doc Award handed out to the multi-awarded seasoned filmmaker/producer Virpi Suutari (Garden Lovers, Aalto), comes with a $15,000 (€14,000) contribution from Al Jazeera, which also enters the project as co-producer.

Produced by Suutari’s Euphoria, Once Upon a Time in a Forest (Olipa kerran metsäp, WT) is a morality play and a love story about a younger generation whose main object of love is the Finnish forest. The artistic environmental-driven film follows the 22-year-old Ida as she matures, to be the leader of the new Forest Movement. The expected delivery is April 2024.

Meanwhile the Cannes Docs Post-Production Award to Meril (WT) comes with a €5,000 prize from Hiventy, technical partner of the Cannes Festival.

The Swedish documentary produced by HER Film’s Malin Hüber (Lucky One), is the director’s captivating portrait of her inner journey as a transgender, as she investigates the suicide of her trans friend Meril, from Chonburi, Thailand to Paris. The film co-produced by France’s Les Films du Bilboquet has received support so far from the Swedish Film Institute, the CNC’s Aide aux Cinémas du Monde and Eurimages.

Two other Nordic documentaries were presented at Cannes Docs’ Scandinavian Showcase this week.

• Denmark’s I Belong Nowhere (Jeg tilhører ingen steder) is the latest film by the multi-awarded Kaspar Astrup Schröder (Rent a House, Big Time, The Invention of Dr Nakamats), produced by Good Company Pictures’ Katrine A. Sahlstrøm (Ai Weiwei the Fake Case) and Maria Helga Stürup (Nobody Knows Casper).
  
  The film follows the Japanese student Koki (21), the voice of the GenZ, who has set up a mental health chat centre to help lonely people connect and find much-needed social interaction and human support. The chat service ‘A Place for You’ has now over 300,000 users, it employs 600 people and has been influential in the Japanese government’s decision to set up a Minister of Loneliness.
  
  “Japan is a magnifying glass for mental health issues, with its extreme working culture and philosophy of endurance,” explained Sahlstrøm and Stürup at the Scandi showcase.
  
  Sweden’s established Memento Film has boarded the project, co-financed so far by DR, SVT, VGTV, with support from the Danish Film Institute and the Swedish Film Institute. The expected delivery is January 2025.

• Norway’s An Army of Women by first feature length filmmaker Julie Lunde Lillesæter (DoP on Thank You for the Rain) follows two women in Austin, Texas as they join forces with other victims of rape, to challenge the legal system that allows their aggressors to walk free. Their ground-breaking class-action lawsuit is the first to argue that sexual assault isn’t prosecuted due to gender discrimination.

The film produced by Natalya Sarch of Differ Media, Norway is being co-produced by NRK, SVT and NDR/Arte. Delivery date is set for early 2024.

The main Docs-in-Progress Award went to Island of the Winds by Taiwanese Ya-Ting Hsu.