”They call us the usual suspects”: “the Nordic distributor dream team going for the Venice gold

A perhaps lesser-known fact about the Venice International Film Festival – at least for those not in attendance – is that it’s not really taking place in “proper” Venice. Rather, it’s on the Lido, a slender barrier island in the Venetian Lagoon (this is also where Thomas Mann ended the life of Gustav von Aschenbach, which possibly renders Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig) a slight misnomer). In fact, many Venice festivalgoers never set foot in “proper” Venice.

An even more well-kept secret about this most renowned proponent of the utmost in groundbreaking visionary cinema art since 1932 (the world’s oldest film festival) is that it actually has an industry platform, almost out of sight for those not looking close. You won’t bump into (at times literally) clusters of film industry professionals, dashing about from screening to meeting to another screening and another meeting, ear and nose deep in phone, squeezing the most out of the occasion – an almost 24/7 activity at Berlin and Cannes and other equally bustling events around the globe. But not at Venice, whose early September dates to many a film industry professional may at best be marked down in the calendar, but without further action.

That said, there are some industry players, returning ones, faithfully year after year, moving into decades, never missing out on the Lido in early September. Three of them are Svend Bolstad Jensen, CEO of Arthaus in Oslo, Norway; Kim Foss, CEO of Camera Film in Copenhagen, Denmark; and Mattias Nohrborg, founder and head of acquisitions at TriArt Film in Stockholm, Sweden. They are distributors with, among them, around 80 years of presence at the festival, a respectable age indeed.

“Little brother” Bolstad Jensen first came here in 2001. “I think I’ve missed out on two editions since then, when I went to Toronto instead – which I regretted afterwards,” he confesses.

Nohrborg is the eldest of the statesmen. His first Venice was in 1983, when he experienced the world premiere of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander, 1983), together with legendary Swedish critics like Jurgen Schildt and Jan Aghed, and also Bergman himself, who showed up out of nowhere for a few hours and then left again. Nohrborg stayed, and returned. “I didn’t go every year in the 80s, and there were a couple of times after that when the Toronto schedule just got too tight. But I celebrated my 30th Venice in 2020.”

Kim Foss came ashore in 1995, and has been back around 30 times, i.e. every year. He started out as a film critic, began to curate for film clubs and festivals, ran the NatFilm Festival, and later founded CPH:DOX (activities that earned him and co-director Andreas Steinman a Bodil at the National Danish Film Awards in 2006). Since 2006, he is the head of the Grand Teatret in Copenhagen, a cinema with its own distribution company, Camera Film. He also co-runs the Gloria cinema together with Anne-Mette Søgaard. Foss is quite content with the size of the Venice industry operations.

“During my years at the festival, there’ve been several attempts to increase the market activity, but it has never quite taken off. And perhaps that’s just as well. I have benefitted greatly just from taking a stroll through the hotel garden of the Quattro Fontane, where the sales agents gather, and where you can get together very informally and have relaxed talks on film and business matters without booking appointments and meetings.”

Svend Bolstad Jensen is in hearty agreement. “I highly appreciate the relief of stress and strain regarding sellers and producers in Venice. There’s more time to discuss cinema and less time thrown away on pro forma meetings and ultimately uninteresting industry shtick, something that can both steal your time and your energy. I love the laidback Venice atmosphere, where cinema is at the centre and heart of things. Quite frankly, when I hear of any increase or expansion within the Venice market, I feel a measure of worry and concern…”

Mattias Nohrborg, who has also embarked on a producer career – his credits include Palme (2012), Hotel (Hotell) (2013), Gentlemen (2014) and Exodus (2022) – does acknowledge some of the market initiatives from the festival. “I know of their Production Bridge programme, and several Swedish directors I’ve worked closely with, like Måns Månsson and Axel Petersén, have been attending. There are about 50 projects per year. They also have a book adaptation market and a couple of seminars, some of them quite rewarding.”

The well-travelled trio frequents a number of events over their working year. In addition to the mandatory Cannes and Berlin trips, the Unifrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in Paris is high on the list, as is Göteborg, Haugesund, Tromsø and CPH: DOX for the regional updates. On occasion also MIA in Rome, Italian Screenings, UK Screenings, German Screenings and IDFA in Amsterdam. The now defunct MIFED film market in Milan used to be a big draw every autumn, as was Toronto in September just after Venice, but with time has become a lesser one.

“There was actually a direct flight at least twice a week from Venice to Toronto. I was on it a couple of times,” remembers Nohrborg, who first went to the great North American platform in 1992. “Toronto wasn’t always the festival biggie it is today, and in 1992, they invited European distributors with open arms, but this has cooled off since then. They’ve also increasingly chosen to show English-language films rather than European ones.”

Both Foss and Bolstad Jensen have attended Toronto, the latter very sparingly, the former more regularly until he decided to quit after the hiatus of the COVID period. None of them seems to be at any great loss, while the current surroundings on the Lido are still dear to them.

“Through all these years, Venice has maintained and cultivated their ideals. While I rarely or never bought anything in Toronto, I would always buy two, three or four films in Venice, each year,” says Nohrborg.

All three have “gold” accreditations, providing access to all the press screenings plus a special “industry only” programme, usually showing at the Pasinetti cinema at the lowest level of the Sala Grande (with great air conditioning, a welcome extra when it’s 30 degrees plus outside). Bolstad Jensen talks of an openness to “the experimental or the not entirely perfect; works that seek out and test new things, films that stimulate”. He often picks up some of the best films of the year in his distribution batch, naming finds like Y tu mamá también (2001), The Return (Vozvrashcheniye, 2003), The Wrestler (2008) and The Reunion (Återträffen, 2013) as prime examples. Foss finds some of the best French cinema here, by the likes of Robert Guédiguian and Jacques Audiard, and also brand new talent like Alice Diop and her first feature Saint Omer (2022). Nohrborg refers to the special brand of cinema that Venice offers as “high quality art house with the potential to attract an audience”. His best Venice moment may still be when he saw Three Colours: Blue (Trois couleurs: Bleu, 1993) and Short Cuts (1993) on the same day, and later got to screen both of them in Swedish cinemas.

While the Nordic presence in the selection offers gems on a regular basis, and Kim Foss is just one out of many who’ll never forget Roy Andersson’s Golden Lion win, “after which he turned up the day after in Toronto, still with his Lion under his arm”, he also finds room for improvement. “I don’t quite feel that the Italians ‘get’ us who live up there in the cold, they seem more comfortable with southern European fare. Berlin is more open to the North, if you ask me.” Bolstad Jensen is more optimistic (the fact that Norway is the only Nordic country in the main 2024 Venice competition could play a role). “What they do show from the Nordics is very solid. Anna Odell’s The Reunion was a real jackpot.”

The three also get together and make joint offers for a joint territory, often augmented by Finnish distributor Mika Siltala of Mondo Cinema (being annually busy with the Finnish Affair market event at the upcoming Love & Anarchy Festival in Helsinki, he has to forgo his Venice presence.

“We rarely don’t do it, because after the pay-TV stations started defining the Nordic market as one territory many years ago, we smaller distributors have been forced to join together in all possible and impossible alliances,” says Kim Foss. “At the festivals we text each other all the time and check out what each one of us has seen and would like to make an offer on. When we have to compete with pan-Scandinavian companies such as Scanbox, Nordisk and SF, we have to, at the least, be able to present a joint Nordic front.” A quite robust one at that, it seems. “They call us ‘The Usual Suspects’ in the European distributor circles,” says Nohrborg. Bolstad Jensen has his own moniker, “The Dream Team”.

Among the “Dream Team” flagships is almost the entire catalogue of Japan’s Studio Ghibli. The mutual trust is solid, and through the years, a fine and vast selection of discoveries have travelled north by courtesy of these unusually good suspects, when it comes to the quality Venice variety. They come, see, have a good talk over a good cup of coffee or on occasion something cooler and stronger, and on the right occasion they conquer. As for the missing Mika Siltala, he’s still present in spirit. “He’s my favourite film market philosopher, and he gave me the best piece of distributor advice ever,” says Foss. “Namely: ‘If you cry, then buy.’”

Any disadvantage, at all, with the Venice experience, seems hard to find. Mattias Nohrborg, the elder statesman, does come up with a gripe, as of these last years. “My main problem right now is the ticket booking system that turned up during Covid. Venice maintains it and insists on all of us adhering to it. Cannes and Berlin do not, when it comes to industry professionals and the cinemas we are allocated. Very user-unfriendly, for people who need to be able to move around quickly, not seldom leaving one screening and popping into another one, which is our most common way of working.”