The two Nordic co-productions are part of 14 international features that just received funding from the UK Global Screen Fund via the European Convention on Cinematographic Co-Productions.

The Damned was granted £250,000 and The End £200,000.

The long-gestated psychological horror The Damned directed by Iceland’s Thordur Palsson, was initially developed with support from Nordisk Film & TV Fond’s Nordic Genre Boost scheme in 2016. “Nordic Genre Boost was hugely helpful- this is where I first got the contact for our scriptwriter Jamie Hannigan and we’ve been working on the script ever since,” said the writer/director, recipient of the 2015 Nordic Talents Award.

Australian rising star Odessa Young (Mothering Sunday, The Staircase) toplines the feature film set in 1880 in Iceland. The young widow Eva, is faced with an impossible choice. Does she rescue the survivors of a ship which is sinking off the shores of her fishing village, at the risk of endangering the lives of her own people, who are lacking food supplies for the winter?

While the villagers are struggling with their guilt, Eva starts having unsettling visions.

“It is a very atmospheric genre film, with strong emotions, seen through Eva’s perspective” said Palsson whose breakthrough title was the Netflix/RÚV series The Valhalla Murders.

The film is produced by Emilie Jouffroy and Kamilla Kristiane Hodøl of Elation Pictures Limited in the UK, with John Keville and Conor Barry of Wild Atlantic Pictures in Ireland, Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson and Anton Máni Svansson of Join Motion Pictures in Iceland, and Benoît Roland of Wrong Men in Belgium. Protagonist Pictures handles global sales.

“We are over the moon about the UK Global Screen Fund co-production support for The Damned”, said Kamilla Kristiane Hodøl, Producer at Elation Pictures. “We have been working on this project for years, and we are very fortunate that the UKGSF was created at just the right time for us, providing co-production funding which might otherwise have been challenging to raise out of the UK. Their support was critical in getting our film across the line."

Meanwhile the musical film The End, directed by two-time Oscar-nominated Joshua Oppenheimer, is a co-production between Signe Byrge Sørensen of Denmark’s Final Cut for Real, Viola Fügen and Michael Weber of Germany’s The Match Factory, Tracy O'Riordan of the UK’s Moonspun Films, Conor Barry of Ireland’s Wild Artlantic Pictures and Flaminio Zadra of Italy’s Dorje Film.

The highly-anticipated film has received support from the Danish Film Institute, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, Eurimages and Germany’s Film & Medienstiftung NRW among others. US leading indie distributor Neon has acquired rights for North America, with The Match Factory handling world sales.

The short logline depicts the film as a “Golden Age musical about the last human family”. In the starring roles are Tilda Swinton, George Mackay and Stephen Graham.

The £7m per annum UK Global Screen Fund administered by the British Film Institute, was launched last year to boost international development and distribution opportunities for the UK’s independent screen sector, across film, TV, documentary, animation and interactive narrative games content.