“It was great to pay tribute to the script of Dumbsday for daring to move into something that is so creatively wild.”

Norway’s Dumbsday (Dummedag), written by Christopher Pahletook, produced by Marit Støre Valeur (Seafood TV), and directed by Erlend Westnes, took the Best Screenplay award at Canneseries.

Having impressive five Nordic series nominated, with Danish Dark Horse, Finnish Money Shot (Toinen Tuleminen), Swedish Painkiller and Spanish/Swedish This is not Sweden (Això no és Suècia), and Danish actor Sofie Gråbøl as Jury President, the Nordics made a strong appearance at La Croisette.

To many people, Sofie Gråbøl is the face of the Nordic wave in TV drama, starring as Sarah Lund in 40 episodes of The Killing (Forbrydelsen), and with countless major international roles since. Most recently as Miriam in Prisoner (Huset), which was in the Canneseries competition 2023 and won the Prix D'Italia.

By accepting the challenge of being president of the jury in the important Canneseries festival, Gråbøl is cementing her role as an ambassador for Nordic Drama.

Is the Nordic wave still rolling?

The fact that I was asked to be President of the Jury, I see as a cadeau to, well, you could say Nordic, but to a large extent Danish TV series. Obviously I was asked because I was there last year with Prisoner, which was in competition. And like you say, probably also because of The Killing. Even though this was many years ago, it kicked the door open for Danish serial drama abroad. It's clear to see that it has left its mark, that it started a wave that has now really made a lasting impression. We can not only be proud of this, but also benefit from it in a very concrete way.

I think we in the Nordics are generally good at making deep and serious series with topics that are seen from a new angle. The quality is extremely high: good stories, good production. There’s a lot to be proud of.

The other members of the jury came from Brazil, Spain, Timbuktu, and France. What was your role as the jury president?

The president’s role is to lead the work of the jury and, in the worst-case scenario, be the one with the heaviest vote. We worked very well together as a group. We had eight series to watch, so two a day for four days. And that's a lot of impressions. We watched the first two episodes of each series.

How can you judge an entire series by watching two episodes?

You might think it's unfair to only watch two episodes to judge an entire series. But you can very quickly get a sense of how the story is told, how it's directed and how it's written. How it's delivered. It's not something that suddenly happens in episode five.

All storytelling is basically about pacing. When you set up a feature film, you can see the entire set-up, all the arcs. Judging the best acting performance in a series on the basis of two episodes is a bit tough, because you only see the set-up. There are lots of performances where you think: “I bet this character is building up to manifest strongly later”, but of course it's not going to unfold in the first two episodes, in which you are still establishing the characters.

Did the jury watch the series on their own, or with a cinema audience?

The festival has reserved a row for us in the big theatre, where we watched the series with the audience. It's amazing to experience a series in the presence of a large audience. It's really unique. We usually experience TV series in our living rooms or bedrooms.

The screenings are also very much meant for the people who created the series. The vast majority of series have not premiered in their home countries. It can be a strange feeling to put so much effort and time and heart and soul into a project and never really have the experience of the series being watched by an audience. So, it's a really great way to experience these series, because you have the main forces behind the series present in the room.

Could you elaborate on the jury work? Was special attention paid to theme and story, to the level of innovation, the acting, the craftsmanship, or to some other dimensions?

It's incredibly diverse. That's the terrible thing about these competitions, it's not a sport. You can't tell who runs the fastest or jumps the highest. Everyone who works with any part of storytelling has a consciousness, not just about what you do yourself, but even more so about how it fits into the overall narrative. It's a collective work. I don't just sit and watch the way the actors perform. The composer doesn't just sit and focus on the music. We are tuned in to the overall narrative. But it's obvious that we can make use of each other's professional knowledge. Using the example of music versus acting. We actually had some interesting conversations about that. Some of the things that look easy to the audience can really impress an actor. Some of the simplest and seemingly most uncomplicated things can actually be incredibly difficult to bring to life and make believable. It was the same with the music. If you don't know much about music, you might think that it's incredibly simple music. But simple expression can sometimes be one of the most difficult disciplines.

Basically, I think whatever you do in film or TV series, storytelling is a question of organisation: How do you best organise the story? We had a lot of interesting conversations there.

One of the things I found exciting about sitting on this jury and also, as a Dane, going and working abroad, is the encounter with your own culture. I think most of us have the notion that my taste in film or my perception of TV series is my individual taste or opinion, or what moves me, what makes an impression on me, what speaks to me.

When you meet people from other cultures, you often discover how much your perceptions, tastes and understanding are rooted in culture. You could say that in the Nordic countries, we have a strong sense of storytelling that is delicate and nuanced, that features strong emotions and big stories with very small effects. There are series from other parts of the world that are much more expressive.

It's really interesting to be in a group as diverse as we were, and exchange and try to kind of grasp how much is my individual experience and judgment of a series, and to what extent I can peel away all my own filters and try to see the series with a slightly larger lens. That's one of the really inspiring things about being on a jury.

There were series in very different genres: comedy, historical biopic, family drama, political thriller, so you have to judge the series on their own premises: whether they succeed in what they set out to do and form a coherent narrative. It wasn't like we agreed on a framework within which to judge.

That's the great thing about having five awards. That you can give an award to different things. It was great that we could pay tribute to the script of Dumbsday for daring to move into something that is so creatively wild. And successfully tell a story with a heavyweight, serious topic from a hilarious and funny angle.

Everyone is talking about the deep crisis in the industry. What is your advice on how to get going?

Overall, I believe that as long as we stick to our core knowledge, I'm convinced that it has relevance. What can be dangerous about success is to strive for more success. To start calculating and pleasing, or to try to adapt. You don't have to make something that looks like something Hollywood has produced in order to compete. On the contrary, I think the more you stay true to your local expression, the more interesting it becomes, and the more universal it becomes.