VOLVO SCANDINAVIAN FILM FESTIVAL OPENS IN ONE WEEK WITH WELCOME TO NORWAY!
AND WELCOMES HOT-TICKET SCANDINAVIAN ACTOR JAKOB OFTEBRO FOR EXCLUSIVE Q&A SCREENINGS
Palace Barracks is just one week away from launching the third Volvo Scandinavian Film Festival, with a Queensland Premiere screening and special Scandinavian guest to celebrate. The festival opens with Rune Denstad Langlo’s WELCOME TO NORWAY!, an acerbic and insightful black comedy about an aspiring hotel owner who decides to turn his half-built alpine hotel near the Norwegian-Swedish border into a state-funded refugee asylum reception centre. Guests are invited to enjoy a pre-film reception from 6pm with Scandinavian Cakes and Wine, entertainment and Icelandic Vikings (yes, really!) before a 7pm screening.
Land Of Mine
To celebrate the festival, one of Scandinavia’s most talented young actors, Jakob Oftebro, will be in attendance in Brisbane on Opening Night and participating in a Q&A screening on July 14 for his film AS IT IS IN HEAVEN 2: HEAVEN ON EARTH. Ten years after the stunning success of As It Is In Heaven, veteran director Kay Pollak rekindles the magic of his original film with this independent sequel. Oftebro has appeared in over 20 films and his television work includes the BAFTA nominated Danish/Swedish TV series, The Bridge, as well as a featured role in the highly regarded 1864 by Ole Bornedal. Oftebro also stars in festival film GOLD COAST.
As It Is In Heaven 2
The festival continues until July 27 and will see some of the most exciting and fresh movies from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland grace Palace Barracks Cinema screens. Sitting in the festival CENTREPIECE, LAND OF MINE is a gripping thriller about a group of young German POW soldiers in Denmark in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The festival program also includes a SPECIAL PRESENTATION of THE FENCER. Named “The best Finnish film in a decade” by Finland Today, this inspirational story is a fictionalized biopic based on the life of legendary fencer Endel Nelis who hid from Stalin’s secret police in a remote Estonian village, trying to keep a low profile as the local school’s sports instructor.
The Fencer
This year’s program also sees a special retrospective screening of the THE PUSHER TRILOGY. Hitting the scene at 26 years-old, Nicolas Winding-Refn made his directorial debut with 1996’s PUSHER. Despite the ten year gap between the first and last films, the trilogy showcases a cohesive and kinetic visual style and recurring themes of honour, family, and the cruel twists of fate that haunt the central characters forcing them into dreadful corners. Nordic Noir at its finest, this is a synapse-splitting series not for the faint hearted.
Full program and tickets are available here: www.scandinavianfilmfestival.com
Main image from ‘As It Is In Heaven’
