Nordic Talents 2016: Women on Top

Finland’s Kaisa El Ramly, top winner of Nordic Talents 2016 was one of many strong female voices that impressed the 175 delegates gathered at Copenhagen’s National Film School of Denmark August 31^st- September 2.

During the 16th Nordic Talents co-organised by Nordisk Film & TV Fond and the National Film School of Denmark, ELO Helsinki Film School alumna Kaisa El Ramly was handed out the NOK 250,000 Nordic Talents Pitch Prize towards the development of her first feature project Scenes from a Dying Town. The writer/director/producer had earlier conquered the Nordic Talents audience with her 20 minute Born Wrong. Set in a taxi taking two adult sisters to the funeral of their father, the film is a tense comedy drama that captures the fast disintegration of the sibling’s relationship as childhood memories re-emerge. Juror and The Bridge/Bron producer Lars Blomgren of Filmlance International said: “We all loved Kaisa’s graduation film. It was fantastic in the acting, directing, dialogue. We felt she would be able to deliver the similar high quality with her first feature.“

Co-juror Wibeke Rønseth, film Commissioner at the Norwegian Film Institute added: “doing a 30 minute film is different than doing a feature film. But El Ramly’s project pitched consists of several scenes, like her short film. We have faith that she will make a feature length project of the same calibre.“

Double Special Mentions
For the third time since Nordic Talents inception, the Special Mention award was split between two projects: the feature film Sisters by Swedish filmmaker Mika Gustafson of Gothenburg’s Valand Academy, and teen TV drama Changeling co-written by Harald Mæle jr and Kjersti Wøien Håland of Lillehammer’s Norwegian Film School.

The two projects will each receive NOK50,000 development money from Nordisk Film & TV Fond. The jury was convinced by Gustafson’s ‘fresh and singular voice’ after watching clips of her graduation film Mephobia, a hybrid hand-held camera work focusing on a group of young women aged 25-30 trying to provoke their surroundings.

The teen TV drama project Changeling about a 13 year old girl eager to fit in but who realises her true identity as a changeling, seduced the jury for its clear youth-oriented theme and engaging idea. “The concept of the teenager girl that suddenly grows a tail was very catchy,” said Rønseth. “It’s a fascinating way of speaking about teen bodies transforming during puberty.”

Teen preoccupations, family conflicts based on personal stories were some of the recurrent themes of the 15 graduation films and 14 pitches as stressed by juror Petja Peltomaa, head of Drama at Yellow Film & TV. “The films were of very high quality. I have seen many graduation films, just developed from a production point of view. But here they grew from the script and observations of life. You could recognise something real in them, stiffened by a sense of emergency.”

Another striking element of the 16th Nordic Talents was the high number of emerging female voices. “We are standing on the verge of a whole new generation of filmmaking’, asserted animation director/producer and co-juror Anders Morgenthaler. ‘“The female directors were cool, open-minded, interested in all kinds of stories, ready to entertain and create art. I was totally blown away! Gender equality is one of the biggest barriers to break down, but now I’m very optimistic”, he said. 

Animation
The three Danish animation graduation shorts A Day with Dad by Mads Guldborg Bøge, Jytte, a Danish Hero by Daniel Mühlendorph, pitched by co-writer Morten Zachariassen, and Dagny by Peter Lopes Andersson showed again the high standard of animation works coming out of the National Film School of Denmark. A Day with Dad in particular, the humorous story of a single dad who has to take for the day his naughty little boy to work at a nuclear missile silo, was a hit amongst NT participants. 

Based on his own experience, Morgenthaler advised the young animation students to ‘be more realistic about budgets’ “When you graduate from a film school, you are far from making your first animated feature length film. It’s important for graduates to think of what they pitch and to have a realistic goal. Aiming for a €1m budget - €2m if you’re lucky - is the most realistic in today’s world where you have €1m projects at one end and €15m at the other end and nothing in between. But the good thing is that there are so many ways now to tell stories on any platform you want.”

Quality Pitches
Commenting on the overall event, Kristina Trapp, co-juror and Head of EAVE was ‘pleased to see ‘what’s cooking in the Nordics and to be able to scout future talents/producers for her European training programme'. “There was a great variety of projects –more commercial or arthouse, plot-driven or poetic which made it tougher for us jurors to pick the winners.“

Trapp also praised the quality of the pitches, thanks to the pre-Nordic Talents two-day workshop supervised by Paul Tyler and Karoline Leth. “Students were extremely well prepared. I appreciate that because bad pitching can ruin a project presentation. The pitching preparation also created a bond between the graduation students. It was heart-warming to see them applauding for each other’s pitching.”

Several rising talents had constructive meetings with professionals and felt a step closer to the business side of film and television.

Iceland’s Ugla Hauksdóttir, graduate of New York’s Columbia University School of the Arts and one of the talents to watch, said she was negotiating with an Icelandic producer for her pitched feature project Aria and had positive discussions in Copenhagen with potential Nordic co-producers. “Nordic Talents was a meaningful experience in many aspects,” she told nordicfilmandtvnews. “It was inspiring to meet other Nordic students who might become future collaborators and heart-warming to feel the genuine interest from industry people. Most of all, seeing the female talent was amazing and I’m extremely hopeful for the future of women filmmaking.”

FOR FULL DETAILS ON NORDIC TALENTS CLICK HERE.