Five Nordic doc projects court partners at Cannes Docs

Five Nordic documentary projects were presented on Saturday 16 May at Cannes Docs’ Docs-in-Progress – The Five Nordics Showcase, staged in the Lérins 1 screening room. Hosted by Elisabeth Aalmo of the Norwegian Film Institute, the session brought together projects from Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland, and Sweden, all in production or post-production and looking for festivals, sales, distribution, gap financing or strategic partners.

First up was Island Nation (Eyriki), directed by Irish-Russian filmmaker Nikolai Galitzine and produced by Stockfish head Dögg Mósesdóttir for Northern Wave Productions. This Iceland-UK production, currently in post-production and expected in May 2026, is billed as “a love letter to a remote Arctic community going through upheaval, depopulation and climate change”.

Galitzine explained that the film began after a previous project in Russia collapsed because of the war. While sitting in a friend’s kitchen in Reykjavík, he heard about a trip to a remote Arctic island to help rebuild a church destroyed in a storm. “I thought that was a good cathartic moment,” he said. “I took the camera with me. I kind of had a feeling there was going to be a film there.” He ended up spending seven months on the island, and said the film was made “specifically” for the people he met there.

Mósesdóttir described the island as “the only place in Iceland that’s in the Arctic”, adding that its simple lifestyle can feel like “stepping into the past”. The team is looking for distribution, sales and further partners, with Galitzine stressing that the film should speak to other remote communities facing similar pressures.

Norway was represented by The Greatest Illusion (Den største illusjonen), helmed by Benjamin Ree and staged by Ingvil Giske for Medieoperatørene, with Denmark and Estonia attached as co-production partners. The project follows Alexx Alexxander, a popular illusionist who repressed memories of his youth, when his father killed his mother and was later convicted of the crime.

Ree said Alexxander was 21 when the murder happened, and had to take responsibility for three younger siblings, aged 11, 13 and 15. Together, they began touring Norway with magic shows. “In a way, you can say that’s how they survived,” Ree noted. The director connected with Alexxander years ago through shared experiences of trauma and memory loss, leading him to ask whether magic and illusion could become a cinematic way to express an internal state.

Ree said the film will combine observational documentary with staged practical illusions, to be shot in Estonia later this year. “When you observe with a camera, you can’t see the inside,” he said, adding that the film will openly recreate moments linked to trauma triggers. The film explores “crime and punishment and redemption and forgiveness”, with the team looking for festivals, sales agents, distributors and buyers.

Sweden’s project was Simon Klose’s untitled Timbuktu documentary, produced by Martin Persson and Elin Kamlert for Anagram. The film follows Swedish rapper and public figure Jason “Timbuktu” Diakité as he explores his African-American roots and strained relationship with his father, Madubuko “Buko” Diakité.

Kamlert said the film is already a Sweden-Denmark-Norway co-production, backed by the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian film institutes, broadcasters SVT, NRK and NDR, regional funding in Skåne, and Scandinavian theatrical distribution through Scanbox. The team is aiming for a fall 2027 premiere, with Toronto highlighted as a possible target.

Klose described the film as his most personal work to date, as Diakité is “my closest personal friend”. The story began in 2015, when Diakité feared that his seriously ill father’s death would sever his last living link to his African-American heritage. When Buko recovered, but refused to return to South Carolina, Diakité travelled there with Klose. “This is a story about family reconciliation, resilience, love,” the director said.

Meanwhile, Denmark’s All I Ever Wanted (På Et Splitsekund), directed by first-time feature filmmaker Christina Martiny Moltke and produced by Esther Nissen and Maria Kristensen for Final Cut for Real, was presented as an intimate love story about Leslie, a film composer diagnosed with acute leukaemia three weeks before her wife Thilde was due to give birth to their second child.

Moltke began filming in January 2024 after receiving a call from Leslie, a high-school friend. “Before I could fully process the news, Leslie asked if I would make a film with her,” she said. Doctors had advised Leslie to find something to hold on to, and as a composer she needed a creative process to digest what was happening.

The producers framed the film as a story about family life, invisible care work, mental health, and the practical and emotional consequences of illness. The 90- and 52-minute versions are in editing, with a February 2027 release expected. The team is seeking festivals, sales agents, distributors and buyers.

The showcase closed with Finland’s Lonesome Land (Raakkukuningas), written, directed and produced by Virpi Suutari through Euphoria Film. The film centres on a real environmental case in eastern Finland, where a forestry machine driver unknowingly crushed thousands of endangered freshwater pearl mussels while crossing a river.

Suutari billed the project as “a philosophical crime film with an absurd comical twist”, noting that one of its central characters is not human, but a freshwater pearl mussel, a species that can live for over 200 years in the same river. The case, she said, is “one of the most severe environmental crimes in Finland’s history”, but the film asks who the real culprit is: “the small human being in the wheels of capitalism or the multinational corporation that commissioned the work?”

Currently at rough-cut stage, Lonesome Land is expected to be completed by the end of 2026. Suutari is in Cannes looking for a sales agent, distribution and festivals.

Of the five documentaries, Lonesome Land and All I Ever Wanted have applied for, and received, support from Nordisk FIlm & TV Fond.