25/08/2015 - There are new Danish, Finnish, Icelandic and Norwegian selections for the 10-20 September showcase

Danish director Martin Zandvliet’s Land of Mine [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Louis Hofmann
interview: Martin Zandvliet
film profile], a war epic from a lesser-known chapter of Danish history, will open the new auteur section, Platform, at the Toronto International Film Festival, which takes place from 10-20 September.

Both of Zandvliet’s previous features, Applause [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Martin Pieter Zandvliet
film profile] (2009) and A Funny Man [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2011), were selected for the festival. His third follows a group of German prisoners of war, who in May 1945, after the end of World War 2, were brought to Denmark and forced to disarm the two million landmines that the German occupying forces had scattered along the west coast.

Scripted by Zandvliet, Land of Mine stars Roland Møller, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Louis Hofmann and Joel Basman in the Mikael Christian Rieks production for Nordisk Film Production, with Germany’s Amusement Park Films. Nordisk has scheduled the Danish release for 3 December.

Meanwhile, Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen’s black comedy Men and Chicken – the Oscar-winning writer’s first film as a director in ten years – will continue its festival tour to Toronto’s Vanguard, where it will have its first North American presentation. 

Finnish directors Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola’s first feature-length documentary, Return of the Atom, will be world-premiered in TIFF Docs; shot since 2004 in Eurajoki and Olkiluoto, it depicts the building of the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant in a small town of 6,000 inhabitants. Finland’s Kinotar and Germany’s Blinker co-produced.

Veteran Icelandic director Fridrik Thór Fridriksson’s first film since 2011, Horizon – a feature-length documentary about the late Icelandic painter Georg Gudni Hauksson, who paved the way for a renaissance in Icelandic landscape painting – will also be launched in TIFF Docs. Co-directed by Bergur Bernburg, it was produced by Iceland’s Horizon Productions and Germany’s ResearchGruppen. 

Norwegian director Roar Uthaug’s The Wave [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Roar Uthaug
film profile] – Scandinavia’s first disaster movie, which opened the 43^rd Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund (16 August) – will screen as a Special Presentation in the Toronto programme. As previously announced, Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s Louder Than Bombs [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Trier
film profile] – Norway’s first Palme d’Or contender at Cannes for 36 years – has also been selected for a Special Presentation. 

They will be accompanied by Norwegian director Anne Sewitsky’s Homesick [+see also:
trailer
interview: Ine Marie Wilmann
film profile], a family drama about a 27-year-old woman who meets her brother for the first time when he is 35. Ine Marie Wilmann and Simon J Berger play the leads in the Maipo Film production, which will unspool in the Contemporary World Cinema sidebar.