06/01/2012

Swedish director Sofia Norlin will this spring (March) start principal photography for her feature debut, Tenderness, backed by a €500,000 scholarship presented by Sweden's Stockholm International Film Festival last year to a woman director at the beginning of her career.

From 30 applicants, five were nominated for the grant, which includes cash, services and a Nordic-Baltic distribution contract with Sweden's NonStop Entertainment. Originally it was awarded to Lisa Aschan - director of the award-winning She Monkeys [+see also:
trailer
interview: Lisa Aschan
film profile] - for her new film, Deposit, but Aschan and her producer Anna-Maria Kantarius decided that their project was probably not the most suitable for the concept.

"They will continue the development of the film, but have resolved with the festival committee that the scholarship be transferred to another nominée," said the festival in a press release. "I am glad that Norlin has received the money, and I wish her and her team good luck with the production," added Aschan.

Credited with a 30-minute French-Swedish novella film, Les Courants (2005), for France 2 and Sweden's SVT, Norlin - who is Paris-based - studied film at the University of St Denis in Paris and at the Stockholm Film School. She will shoot her first feature on locations in Kiruna for Olivier Guerpillon's production company, DFM Fiktion. The northernmost city of Sweden, Kiruna is situated on a mine, which is its pounding centre as well as a force threatening to tear it apart, forcing people to move away. Sebastian Hiort af Ornäs - the star of Babak Najafi's prize-winning Sebbe [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (2010) - will play the lead in the story of young people taking the first steps towards building a new society, while the ground is literally shaking under their feet.