Stubborn Danes and Swedish success: memorable Venice memories 2025

As the Venice International Film Festival came to a close on a memorable Saturday night on September 6, where Jim Jarmusch’s gentle family film Father Mother Sister Brother and Kaouther Ben Hania’s harrowing Gaza document The Voice of Hind Rajab (Sawt Hind Rajab) gained the top awards (in an order that caused some controversy), a general appraisal of the 82nd edition is that it can only be regarded as richly fulfilling.

Reading like an A-Z of contemporary auteur all-stars, the 2025 competition brimmed with names like Olivier Assayas, Noah Baumbach, Kathryn Bigelow, Guillermo del Toro, Ildikó Enyedi, François Ozon, Gianfranco Rosi, Benny Safdie, Paolo Sorrentino, Park Chan-wook, Yorgos Lanthimos and László Nemes, most if not all delivering well according to expectations in a wide variety of styles and on topics. Also present in assorted side sections were Werner Herzog, Luca Guadagnino, Gus Van Sant, Julian Schnabel, Tsai Ming-liang, Laura Poitras, Sofia Coppola, Marco Bellocchio, Charlie Kaufman and Lucrecia Martel, cementing a solid event with the finest of world cinema present and accounted for.

As for the Nordic participation, explored in more detail here, the relatively lean presence of any major national productions consisted of one Danish feature playing out of competition in the official section and a Swedish short in the Orizzonti section (comparable to Cannes’ Un certain regard), both of which were very well received. The Swedish short additionally won the main prize in its category, awarded by a jury chaired by Cannes Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau, a success ****possibly anticipated by its maker at an early stage.

“I got a hint that the selection committee really loved the film already before they’d taken the final decision to invite it,” says Lovisa Sirén, director of the awarded film in question, Without Kelly (Utan Kelly). The film is an intimate 14-minute study of a young woman and mother (promising newcomer Medea Strid), recently separated, facing her first ever week away from her infant baby boy (Kelly), as it’s now Dad’s turn in the shared custody schedule.

“The inspiration comes directly from my own experience,” continues Sirén. “I gave birth at the age of 20 and broke up after that, which opened up a flood of emotions, something I felt was worth telling a story about, from my own perspective. I’m well aware of the many young parents out there going through the same thing, so I felt that there could be an interest in this situation in life. When the child is so young and tiny, there’s a strong physical longing that can get quite intense. That was a thing I felt like exploring.”

Sirén, whose short films have a respectable national and international track record – Audition (2016) and Baby (2017) both got Guldbagge nominations, the former also played Sundance, while Pussy Have the Power (2014) was entered at Locarno –released her first feature Maya Nilo (Laura) in 2023. Her decision to return to the short format lies partly in the dynamic of the concentrated playing time, but also in staying active, here and now. “A feature takes time; the financing, the writing, the waiting… I simply felt like doing a film, work as a director, go out and shoot. That’s the advantage with shorts – they’re just quicker to make, and to get made.” When not directing award-winning shorts, Sirén is busy writing both a series and a feature. “It’s a drama inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, but for grown-ups,” she confides, without divulging any greater detail, including the presence of any furry animal in the film.

The world premiere of Anders Thomas Jensen’s sixth directorial feature The Last Viking (Den sidste viking) was met with wonder, ovations and a fair share of roaring laughter. Even Mads Mikkelsen’s name rolling up during the opening credits caused a burst of spontaneous applause. As for Jensen’s increasingly perfected mixture of rather nasty and often criminal characters finding solace and redemption against all odds, with odd personalities, graphic violence, and absurd humour along the way, it surely is an acquired taste, taken to heart at home in Denmark, but this far given limited international exposure, even at the bigger festivals. With his previous outing, Riders of Justice (Retfærdighedens Ryttere, 2020) getting caught up in Covid chaos, Jensen now gets a clean shot at things.

Judging by the trade publications, it looks positive, with assessments like “A bloody and utterly delightful black comedy” (Hollywood Reporter), “The emotional core of a winning film” (IndieWire) and “Fast, furious and frequently funny” (Screen Daily). An interesting reaction was overheard by this reporter from a Japanese colleague: “I was a little shocked at first; Scandinavian and Nordic cinema is usually refined and down to earth and deals with human relations, and this was like something by Tarantino or Kitano, and you guys aren’t supposed… You just usually don’t do that!” Sold, at the time of writing, to 62 territories, the world feels quite willing to get a little shocked.

The Last Viking is also, quite notably, the fourth Zentropa production in a row – following Families like Ours (Familier som vores, 2024), The Promised Land (Bastarden, 2023), and The Kingdom Exodus (Riget Exodus, 2022) – to get through the needle’s eye of Venice. “There’s nothing holding us back – at least if we go through the trouble of making some pretty good films,” half-jokes Sisse Graum Jørgensen, one of the two main producers behind The Last Viking together with Sidsel Hybschmann. The duo also produced Riders of Justice, and laments the pandemic-caused conditions at the time, while looking forward to the launch of the new film. At home base, things have gone “like a grassland wildfire”, according to Hybschmann. “Already in February we put out a little teaser on this film, eight months ahead of the release, and were met with enormous interest and anticipation, truly viral, and without even looking at algorithms and the likes,” notes Graum Jørgensen with great satisfaction.

The plan is to launch Jensen’s name as a director as well as his special brand of cinema, both at home and abroad. “We know, of course, that humour doesn’t always travel, but to our delight, they seem to get it here in Venice,” says Hybschmann, who looks forward to the next phase of the journey. “We’re on our way to Toronto now, it’s the perfect festival pair to start off with.” The Last Viking opens domestically on October 9, and is also on Denmark’s Oscar candidate shortlist together with Mr. Nobody Against Putin by David Borenstein and Beginnings (Begyndelser) by Jeanette Nordahl. The final choice will be unveiled September 17.

Norwegian Mona Fastvold was the one Nordic director playing in the main competition with the primarily British-American (with some Swedish co-production) The Testament of Ann Lee, a chronicle of the British woman who founded the Christian Shaker sect in the 18th century. Leading actress Amanda Seyfried guides her cast/flock through elaborate song and dance numbers, with great detail put into all visuals of this lavishly presented work. The Orizzonti-playing Mother, centred around Mother Teresa and directed by Macedonia’s Teona Strugar Mitevska with Swedish and Danish co-production, gained fine notice for its star Noomi Rapace in the main role.

Rapace was just one of the omnipresent big-name Nordic acting talents appearing in this year’s Venice programme, turning up in some spectacular surroundings. Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite has Rebecca Ferguson doing her expert best as a White House communication coordinator in order to curtail a nuclear enemy missile closing in on the North American continent with great speed. In Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire, top-billed Bill Skarsgård dons an impeccable Midwestern accent as a fed-up mortgage payer who kidnaps his broker and demands an apology (plus a lot of money), all based on true events in the 1970s. Alicia Vikander enters Olivier Assayas’ The Wizard of the Kremlin (Le mage du Kremlin) belting out loud Russian perestroika punk while pulling a naked man on a leash. Decidedly more supple is the Italian Orizzonti entry A Year of School (Un Anno di Scuola), the second feature by David di Donatello-winning director Laura Samani, telling the story of a Swedish girl moving to Trieste with her father, played by Stella Wendick and Magnus Krepper. Going back to the spectacular, Guillermo del Toro has a whole shipload of bearded Danes starting off Frankenstein in the coldest of Arctic surroundings, with Nikolaj Lie Kaas as first mate and Lars Mikkelsen as the captain – an artistic choice possibly stimulated by del Toro’s regular cinematographer, Dane Dan Laustsen, and one that pleased the Mexican director greatly.

“It was really interesting to start with a Danish film, complete with subtitles and all,” he mused. “In the book, the captain is an avatar for Victor Frankenstein. And I said, if I make them both English, it loses interest to me, because they come from the same country. And Dan is Danish, of course, but I have met many Danish people in my life, and I love their sort of rugged stubbornness, like, in a day of sub zero degrees, they wear shorts and go out… It’s really like meeting this extraordinary will. So I said, it's more interesting if the captain is Danish, and I love the Mikkelsens, and Lars has such a unique face. If you tell me Lars is a North Pole explorer, I’ll go 100% yes, he really is.”

Nikolaj Lie Kaas, who also has a lead in The Last Viking, spent four months on the film, with his scenes shot in Canada, and in a place quite unlike the scenario in the film.

“Mads Mikkelsen had recommended me, and we shot in this parking lot in Toronto, just outside the Netflix office. We came up with our lines ourselves. Guillermo is a truly lovely guy and very funny, and it was nice to get to know Lars better. My part isn’t big. I haven’t been able to see the film myself yet, so I don’t know if I’m cut out. Am I in it?”