Up in the Sky is among half a dozen films competing for the Crystal Bear at the Berlinale Generation programme unspooling February 09-19, 2017.

The Swedish film Up in the Sky (Upp i det blå) produced by Memfis Film with support from Nordisk Film & TV Fond will have its international premiere at the Generation Kplus section. The adventure and friendship film mixing live action and puppetry was the directorial debut of TV producer and puppeteer Petter Lennstrand. The film was released domestically by Nordisk Film last autumn.

Up in the Sky will compete against 8 international films at Generation Kplus such as the Norwegian/Swedish co-production Oskar’s America by debut director Torfinn Iversen produced by Original Film and sold by LevelK, as well as the animated film Richard the Stork co-produced by Norway’s Kristine Knudsen and handled worldwide by Global Screen.

The feature length documentary Loving Lorna by Annika and Jessica Karlsson will have its international premiere at the Generation 14plus section. The two documentary filmmaking sisters  paint a portrait of a young woman from a poor suburb of Dublin, in search of happiness.

Nordic shorts selected at Generation Kplus include My Gay Sister by Lia Hietala (Sweden/Norway) and Odd is an Egg by Kristin Ulseth (Norway/Portugal). The Swedish co-production Into the Blue by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic will screen at Generation 14plus.

A total of 62 short and feature-length films from 41 countries will screen at the Generation sidebar.

Berlin will also focus this year on Indigenous cinema from the Arctic. The programme NATIVe 2017 will open with the film Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest by Finnish Skolt Sámi director Katja Gauriloff, the personal film about the director’s great-grand mother.