Milad Alami’s The Charmer won the €12,500 NDR Film Prize and Iram Haq’s What Will People Say the €5,000 NDR Honorary award and the Audience Award.

Alami’s directorial debut produced by The Good Company took home on Saturday the main award from the 59th Nordic Film Days in Lübeck. The psychological drama about an Iranian immigrant desperate to seal a paper marriage in Denmark had previously picked up The 1-2 Prize in Warsaw and the Silver Hugo prize in Chicago.

Meanwhile Norwegian-Pakistani director/writer Haq who won last year’s NDR Film Prize for her feature debut I Am Yours, charmed the Lübeck audience and jury once more with her second film. The jury said: “the director tells her own story in such a breathtaking and emotional way and with such authenticity that it exerts an inescapable pull.” Haq’s What Will People Say produced and distributed by Mer Film, has sold more than 70,000 cinema tickets in Norway so far.

Another Norwegian film – Thelma by Joachim Trier - came home with the €2,500 Baltic Film Prize for Best Scandinavian film. Germany's Koch Media will release it in 2018.  

Other Lübeck awards went to the following films:

  • Up in the Sky by Petter Lennstrand (SE) winner of the €5,000 Children and Youth Prize,
  • Kidbusters by Frefrik Meldal Nørgaard (DK), winner of the Children’s Jury Prize, with an Honorary Mention to Room 213 by Emelie Lindblom (SE), 
  • Disappearance by Boudewijn Koole (NL-NO), Interfilm Church Film Prize, with an Honorary Mention to Going West by Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken NO), 
  • Boiling Point by Elina Hirvonen (FI), Documentary Film Prize, with an Honorary Prize to A Bastard Child by Knutte Wester (SE/NO).

What Will People Say, Thelma and Up in the Sky were backed by Nordisk Film & TV Fond.