Lübeck, Nov. 4, 2015. In its 57th year, the Nordic Film Days Lübeck, which opens today and will show 180 films between now and Nov. 8, 2015, draws upon German experts and international guests to make up the festival's seven juries. The NDR Film Prize, with the highest endowment at 12,500 euros donated by media partner NDR, has been awarded to a "feature film of special artistic quality” since 1990. The five-person NDR jury is made up of judges from Germany, the US and Italy this year.
Bill Guentzler has travelled quite a distance to Lübeck. For the last 10 years, he has been the artistic director of the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) in the US, growing it into a much-loved audience festival. Also on the panel is German film producer Maria Köpf, who has produced for X Filme Creative Pool and been managing director of Zentropa Entertainments Berlin GmbH; she will take over as head of the Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein film board in 2016. Sponsor NDR is represented on the jury by Donald Kraemer, who heads the broadcaster’s film, family and series division, which includes NDR productions of Germany’s famed “Tatort” crime series. German actress Anjorka Strechel has garnered experience in film and on stage and worked on both German and international productions, including among others the Russian film “The Edge” and Ramon Zürcher’s “The Strange Little Cat”. Italian actor Enrico Lo Verso has also worked with international directors. He was seen in Ridley Scott’s “Hannibal”, Gianni Amelio’s “Lamerica” and Josh Evan’s “Che Guevara”.
Sixteen new narrative features from Scandinavia and the Baltic region are competing for this year’s “NDR Film Prize”. The jury’s decision will be announced on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015 at the gala award ceremony in Theater Lübeck. Hosting the evening will once again be beloved NDR entertainer Yared Dibaba.
Notable film experts also make up the jury for the Children's and Youth Film Prize. Topping the list is renowned director and writer Arend Agthe, whose many children's films have been internationally successful and whose most recent outing "Rettet Raffi" has seen good box office since opening in Germany at the end of October. She will be joined on the jury by young actress and director Victoria Schulz, who has reaped honours this year for her lead performances in the films “A Season in Hell” (NFL 2014) and “Dora or the Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents”. Her first directing venture, the short “Deaf & Dumb”, premiered at a German festival in 2015. The third member of the jury is Finland’s Kaisu Isto, who was the director of the Oulu International Children’s and Youth Festival for five years, worked in film acquisitions for Finland’s public broadcaster YLE and was a consultant to the Finnish Film Foundation.
Other juries that select films from the main competition of the 57th Nordic Film Days Lübeck are the Baltic jury, the INTERFILM church jury and the largest jury at the festival, moviegoers, who vote for their favourites to be honoured with the “Lübecker Nachrichten Audience Prize”. Lübeck’s trade unions award the “Documentary Film Prize” for a socially and politically committed film in that section, while the CineStar jury presents an award for best short film in the Film Forum section.
The Nordic Film Days, mounted by the city of Lübeck, opens today with the German premiere of “Rams”, an Icelandic-Danish production that distributor Arsenal is bringing to German theatres at the end of 2015. The festival welcomes to Lübeck both the film’s lead actors, Sigurdur Sigurjónsson and Theódór Júlíusson, as well as producer Grímar Jónsson. Other invited guests and notables include the Icelandic ambassador to Germany, Gunnar Snorri Gunnarsson, Schleswig-Holstein’s minister of culture, the judiciary and Europe, Anke Spoorendonk, vice-president of the Schleswig-Holstein state assembly, Bernd Heinemann; Bernd Saxe, mayor of Lübeck, Lübeck’s city president Gabriele Schopenhauer and the city-state’s senator for culture and education, Kathrin Weiher.
Detailed information on the 57th Nordic Film Days Lübeck, including film synopses, day planner, information on ticket sales and details of the side-bar and special events, the juries and the prizes is available online at: www.filmtage.luebeck.de. - News and announcements can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram/nordicfilmdays and YouTube.
Press contact:
Silke Lehmann
Niko Körner
Antonia Huckle
Press and publicity department
Nordic Film Days Lübeck
Schildstr. 12, 23539 Lübeck, Germany
Tel: +49 451 122 1454
presse@filmtage.luebeck.de
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