Queen of Hearts among major Nordic wins at Sundance, Göteborg

Both films were supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond.

Exactly ten years after winning the Nordic Talents award in Copenhagen, May el Toukhy has now established her name among new Nordic directing voices to watch, fluidly navigating between arthouse/mainstream filmmaking (Long Story Short, Queen of Hearts) and TV drama (The Legacy, Ride Upon the Storm).

On Saturday her second feature Queen of Hearts, created with her graduate friends from the National Film School of Denmark, writer Maren Louise Käehne and producer Caroline Blanco (Nordisk Film Denmark) was bestowed the Audience Award from the World Cinema Dramatic competition at Sundance. In Göteborg, it won the coveted Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film (with the world’s largest cash prize of SEK 1 million), as well as the Audience Award, and new Acting Award handed out to Trine Dyrholm for her tour de force performance as a high flyer lawyer’s downfall who seduces her teen stepson.

The jury of the Dragon Award for Best Film said: “The winner is a many-layered film that challenges our preconceptions about the moral and sexual forces at play within a seemingly normal well-off family. It portrays the sexuality and desires of that neglected subject of cinema, a middle-aged woman, with immense sensitivity. It takes us down the rabbit hole of our hidden human needs and reveals its characters in all their rich and dark complexity.”

Queen of Hearts is sold internationally by TrustNordisk and will open domestically on March 28.

Meanwhile Mads Brügger won a heavy award for Best Director - World Documentary -a t Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival for his film Cold Case Hammaskjöld in which he investigates the death of the former UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, making disturbing revelations along the way. The film opens in Denmark this Thursday. DR Sales handles sales.

Other Nordic films awarded in Göteborg include Anna Eborn’s Transnistra, named Best Nordic Documentary, just a few days after winning Rotterdam’s VPRO Big Screen Award. The film about love and friendship in the breakaway Transnistra Republic of Eastern Moldova will be released domestically by Folkets Bio.

The Eurimages Audentia Award rewarding the work from a female director went to Mia Engberg for Lucky One, and the Sven Nykvist Cinematography Award to Ita Zbroniec-Zajt for the poetic film Season directed by newcomer John Skoog.

Swedish actress turned director Tuva Novotny won the Fipresci award for her Norwegian drama Blind Spot.

For the full list of Göteborg awards, check: www.goteborgfilmfestival.se