Lumikuningatar / The Snow Queen / Die Schneekönigin

The beautiful Snow Queen lives in the far north in a palace of ice and snow. To achieve dominion over Earth with human warmth, she kidnaps young Kai and brings him in her sleigh to the land of eternal frost. But his friend Gerda cannot get Kai out of her mind. When spring arrives, she sets out to find him ... The fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen was one of the first things a young Thomas Mann read. The astonishing depiction of an icy femme fatale made its mark not only on the female characters in his novels, but also on his descriptions of the snowy landscapes in $The Magic Mountain%. Director Päivi Hartzell’s adaptation was named the best Finnish film of 1987. Her modern fantasy drama is awash in brilliant images and sound, telling the action-packed story of the adolescent Gerda on her heroic journey through Finnish Lapland. But she also shows a delicate touch in painting young Kai’s erotic fascination with the Snow Queen, a lure to which Thomas Mann evidently also fell victim.