In 21 years, the only festival entirely dedicated to Nordic films (from the Nordic, Baltic region and Benelux), has established itself as a landmark film event in the French region and film buffs come from all over the country to discover the latest Nordic discoveries, according to Isabelle Duault who oversees the selection, with Jean-Michel Mongrédien, festival director. "Our audience now knows that Scandinavian cinema it not restricted to Bergman or Dreyer's austere filmmaking but includes very different works from five different territories. Some years are particularly rich for certain territories, like 2007 for Norway which won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award with Reprise," she said.
This year, Denmark and Iceland have the strongest presence in the competition programme. Denmark is represented by Anders Morgenthaler's Echo (acquired in France by Swift/Equation Distribution), and Erik Clausen's Temporary Release, and Iceland by Baltasar Kormákur's Jar City (Memento Film Distribution in France) and Björn Br. Björnsson's Cold Trail. Finland has The Matriarch by Markku Pölönen, and Norway, the acclaimed directorial debut of Stian Kristiansen, The Man Who Loved Yngve, one of Duault's favourites.
For the first time ever, Sweden is totally absent from the competition programme, but Roy Andersson's You, the Living is screening at the festival's News from the North section, along with Finland' award-winning Mother of Mine by Klaus Härö and Year of the Wolf by Olli Saarela, and Norway's Varg Veum-Bitter Flowers by Ulrik Imtiaz Rolfsen.
For Duault, getting the best of the latest productions from Scandinavia is getting tougher as Rouen is not an A festival and producers and sales agents prefer to wait for Cannes. Rouen has also suffered over the last three years from a cut down in financial support from Nordic institutes and organisations, in particular regarding the subtitling of prints. "We still have a good support from Finland and Norway, but not any more from the Danish Film Institute, which means unfortunately that a film like Erik Clausen's Temporary Release will be shown with electronic subtitles," noted Duault.
The subtitling issue has not prevented some 32,000 visitors to attend the festival last year, attracted by the high artistic level of the competition, but also by the dozen sidebars. Other highlights of this year's edition include a Focus on Greenland, three rare movies with Greta Garbo, a Cinema lesson by Belgian actor Jan Decleir, a ‘Childhood in Norwegian Cinema' section with five Norwegian films about childhood, a tribute to Ingmar Bergman, the screening of Pablo Tréhin-Marçot's documentary film Filmbyen, the New Mecca of Cinema, and ‘on the Finnish side', videos and short films by Aki Kaurismaki, and the screen adaptation by Rauni Mollberg of short stories written by Erno Paasilinna.