Sweden’s Yellow Bird honoured at Amsterdam’s CineEurope

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

01/07/2011 - Swedish production outfit Yellow Bird, which gave the world the Millennium trilogy, received the European Box-Office Achievement Award at this year’s CineEurope, previously known as CineExpo, which wrapped in Amsterdam yesterday (June 30).

The cinema industry convention, attracting more than 1,000 international distributors and exhibitors, also honoured UK producer and Heyday Films founder David Heyman, as Producer of the Decade. His credits include the Harry Potter eight-feature franchise.

”The prize gave us the opportunity – as the only European production company – to present our upcoming films, with the major US studios,” explained Yellow Bird Producer Søren Stærmose, who brought Stieg Larsson’s Men Who Hate Women [trailer, film focus], The Girl Who Played with Fire [trailer] and The Air Castle That Blew Up [trailer] to the screen.

In Amsterdam, the company screened Norwegian director Morten Tyldum’s Headhunter [trailer], from Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø’s action thriller, which was launched on a four-minute promo reel in Berlin, and since has sold in more than 30 territories for TrustNordisk.

Produced by Asle Vatn (Friland) and Marianne Gray, scripted by Ulf Ryberg and Lars Gudmestad, the thriller, starring Aksel Hennie, will screen at the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund prior to the national release on Aug 26 through Nordisk Film.

Stærmose also unspooled Danish director Peter Flinth’s Nobel’s Last Will, the first in a series of six movies from Swedish author Liza Marklund’s novels about investigative crime reporter Annika Bengtsson, with Malin Crépin in the lead. The film is co-produced with Denmark’s Nordisk Film and Germany’s ARD-Degeto.