Nordisk Film & TV Fond Support 44 Foreign Releases Of Nordic Films

For its first official round of distribution support, the Fund received 58 applications and allocated 44 grants. In comparison, under the scheme's pilot phase, Nordisk Film & TV Fond received 34 applications and handed out 32 grants.

Hanne Palmquist, head of Nordisk Film & TV Fond and initiator of the project said that the substantial increase both in applications and grants compared to the pilot phase shows that 'the scheme is now well established in people's mind and that distributors have embraced this new incentive when buying Nordic films'.

Maywin Media's CEO Sam Klebanov who acquires films for Russia, CIS and the Baltic region said: "I think the High Five Cinema Distribution scheme is very important, especially for Russia, where the market for non-Hollywood films is extremely tough and where there is no state support for arthouse film distribution. This scheme enables us to take risks and keep releasing Scandinavian films in cinemas, so we hope it will continue. His comment was echoed by Zyanya Draijer from Wild Bunch, Benelux. "The High Five Initiative is a fund that reduces the risk in releasing a foreign language art house film, and in the crowded film market we are working in nowadays, that support is much needed. Therefore it functions as an extra important incentive to acquire and distribute a Scandinavian film."

The 19 Nordic films that received distribution support outside the Nordic region are Armadillo, A Family, A Somewhat Gentle Man, Balls, Bad Family, Bananas!, Brotherhood, Easy Money, Home for Christmas, In a Better World, Juan, Magic Silver, Ploddy the Police Car, Rafiki, The Woman Who Dreamed of a Man, Sebbe, Sound of Noise, Submarino and Twigson. The maximum single grant of €20,000 was given out to Spain (Contracorriente Films) and France (MK2) for the upcoming theatrical release of the Swedish thriller Easy Money. A Somewhat Gentle Man received the biggest number of grants (7), followed by Submarino (6) and The grants were allocated based on the criteria specified in the High Five International Cinema Distribution Support guidelines (section 4), and in particular according to the distributors' Minimum Guaranties (MGs), the size of the P&A budgets, the innovative launch strategies.

The next deadline to apply for High Five International Cinema Distribution Support is February 1^st 2011.