Feature Film Competition Shows Genre Variety from Northern Europe

The 15 competing films at the 53^rd Nordic Film Days Lübeck comprise a great variety of genres including comedies, dramas, thrillers and romances, providing a precise and multi-faceted mood barometer of northern European society. Idyllic Swedish picture book facades provide the backdrop for fateful encounters in a provincial small-town and a lesbian romance in the world premieres of the Swedish films "Somewhere Else" by Kjell-Åke Andersson and "With Every Heartbeat" by Alexandra-Therese Keining. Icelandic films are particularly prominent in this year's programme at Nordic Film Days Lübeck, including Árni Ólafur Ásgeirsson's "Brim -Undercurrent", about the harsh working conditions on a fishing trawler, and Rúnar Rúnarsson's "Volcano", in which a close-lipped man must suddenly come to terms with his wife's need for nursing care. Marius Holst's thriller "The King of Devil's Island" recounts an inmate rebellion on a prison island off the coast of Oslo. More films from Norway include Joachim Trier's "Oslo, August 31^st" about a young man's desperate odyssey through the nightlife of Oslo, and Stian Kristiansen's "I Travel Alone", produced by the team of "The Man Who Loved Yngve" (winner of the 2008 NDR Award for Best Feature Film). The Finnish family thriller "Home Sweet Home" by Aleksi Mäkelä tells of a building contractor who is devastated by the economic crisis, and in Ville Jankeri's "Sixpack Movie", also from Finland, three men drift through summertime Helsinki, spaciously avoiding any form of work.

Stellan Skarsga?rd and Benjamin Helstad in "King of Devil's Island"

>The Danish contributions deal with various aspects of the self-image of Danish culture: While Ole Christian Madsen's comedy "Superclásico" has an average Danish man collide with the macho way of life in South America, Martin P. Zandvliet's "A Funny Man" recounts the biography of comedian Dirch Passer, thereby reviving a piece of Danish cultural history. The family life of nine-year-old Lucia is determined by economic hardship and its fatal consequences in Estonia's contribution "The Graveyard Keeper's Daughter" by Katrin Laur. Further contributions to the Feature Film Competition include Hafsteinn G. Sigurðsson's "Either Way", a humorous, laconic study of the friendship between two road-workers in Iceland, Kaijser da Silva's romantic drama "Stockholm East", starring Mikael Persbrandt and Iben Hjejle, as well as "Simon and the Oaks", Lisa Ohlin's literary adaptation of the bestselling novel by Marianne Fredriksson. This Swedish-German co-production stars the Swedish shooting star Bill Skarsgård alongside Jan Josef Liefers and Katharina Schüttler.

Mikael Persbrandt and Iben Hjejle in "Stockholm East"