Feature Films: Romantic Comedies and Gritty Social Dramas

The feature film programme at the 52^nd Nordic Film Days Lübeck shows a multi-faceted image of the Northern Europe: While the Swedish director Hannes Holm tells a story of a romantic loss of innocence on the Stockholm archipelago in “Behind Blue Skies”, the Danish prison drama “R” by Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer depicts brutal everyday prison life in a Jutland jail. “Beyond”, the directing debut by Swedish star actress Pernilla August, also recounts difficult living circumstances and their effects on the child psyche, while Louise Friedberg’s “The Experiment” deals with a secret, inhuman experiment by the Danish government on children from Greenland. Dome Karukoski from Finland, on the other hand, takes us on a pre-Christmas polar joyride full of wit and velocity in “Lapland Odyssey”, while Iceland’s most famous director Fridrik Thór Fridriksson gives a touching yet humorous account of his mother’s dementia in “Mamma Gógó”. Other highlights include the fascinating paranoid thriller “Everything Will Be Fine” by Danish director Christoffer Boe, the ultramodern Hans Christian Andersen adaptation “The Snow Queen” by Estonian director Marko Raat, as well as Jörn Donner’s thrilling reconstruction of the interrogation of a Soviet spy in 1942. The new film by Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland, “A Somewhat Gentle Man”, shows Stellan Skarsgård in a bizarre drama of re-socialization by the great Danish author Kim Fupz Aakeson. The programme also features “Shameless”, the new film by “Elling” director Petter Næss, and the unusual immigration drama “Between Two Fires” by Agnieszka Lukasiak from Sweden. In the bizarre opening film “Sound of Noise” by Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, four musicians terrorize an entire town by abusing everyday objects as music instruments.