14/01/2016 - Catti Edfeldt and Lena Hanno Clyne’s new film will have its world premiere at Berlin, while Rasmus A Sivertsen’s The Big Cheese Race has taken 370,000 local admissions

Swedish directors Catti Edfeldt and Lena Hanno Clyne’s Siv Sleeps Astray [+see also:
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film profile] and Norwegian director Rasmus A Sivertsen’s Solan and Ludvig: The Big Cheese Race [+see also:
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interview: Rasmus A Sivertsen
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Scripted by Clyne, and adapted from Swedish author Pija Lindenbaum’s 2009 children’s book, Siv Sleeps Astray follows seven-year-old Siv (Astrid Løvgren), who will for the first time sleep over at her friend Cerisia’s (Lilly Brown) house, which is very different from her own. She finds it very odd, but with the help of two talkative badger buddies that pop up in the middle of the night, she learns to accept it.

Shot at Studio Kronan in Luleå, Sweden, the film was produced by Peter Lindblad, Sara Sjöö and Clyne for Sweden’s Snowcloud Films, along with Gilda Film, Saperi Film and the Netherlands’ Viking Film. Svensk Filmindustri will handle the Swedish and Twinfilm the Dutch distribution.

The Big Cheese Race is Sivertsen’s second fully animated feature inspired by Norwegian author-artist Kjell Aukrust’s Flåklypa universe, after 2013’s Solan and Ludvig: Christmas in Pinchcliffe [+see also:
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interview: Rasmus A. Sivertsen
film profile], which won an Amanda – Norway’s national film prize – for Best Norwegian Film for Children and Youth Audiences.

Scripted by Karsten Fullu, the Cornelia Boysen and Synnøve Hørsdal production for Maipo Film follows a race across Flåklypa's highest peak, which will decide whether Solan and Ludvig can keep their home after it seemed lost in a drunken bet.

The new family feature with the Aukrust characters (who also “performed” in one of Norway’s most popular films of all time, Ivo Caprino’s The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix, from 1975) was domestically released in late 2015 by Nordisk Film Distribusjon, subsequently racking up 370,000 admissions. Germany’s Sola Media handles the movie’s international distribution.

Also screening in Generation Kplus is Ted Sieger's Molly Monster [+see also:
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film profile], a feature-length spin-off of Chilean-Swiss director Ted Sieger's shorter films about an only child, who goes on a long journey over the Wild Mountains to Egg Island, where she is united with her new family. With a screenplay written by John Chambers, it is co-directed by Sieger's long-time Swedish collaborator, Michael Ekblad, and German director Matthias Bruhn. The German-Swedish co-production was staged by Hannover's Alexandra Schatz Film and Malmö's Slugger Film.

The last Nordic entry in Generation Kplus is Swedish director Peter Modestij's 6A [+see also:
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film profile], a 60-minute version of his half-hour short, about the teacher of class 6A and a number of parents who have called for a meeting to discuss a particular problem. The only children who turn up are three girls, who seem to be the whole reason for the problem: they are accused of bullying the rest of the class. Modestij's second film, after his 2013 short Couple Fucking, will be launched at the Göteborg International Film Festival (29 January-8 February); it was produced by Siri Hjorton-Wagner, for [sic] film.