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BERLINALE 2015 Nordic countries

Witches, lesbian rockers and a pint-sized superhero are all ready for the Berlinale

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- Levan Akin’s The Circle, Bitte Andersson’s Dyke Hard and Ask Hasselbalch's Antboy – Revenge of the Red Fury are in the selection

Witches, lesbian rockers and a pint-sized superhero are all ready for the Berlinale
Dyke Hard by Bitte Andersson

Swedish director Levan Akin’s The Circle [+see also:
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– adapted from Sara Bergmark Elfgren and Mats Strandberg’s award-winning novel of the same name (2011) – will have its world premiere in the Generation 14plus programme at the Berlin International Film Festival, which gets going on Thursday (5 February).

Scripted by Akin together with Sara Bergmark Elfgren, the director’s second feature follows six teenage girls in a rural Swedish town – all are first-year students at the same secondary school, otherwise with little in common – who discover they are witches and have been chosen to save the world from an alien evil.

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The Circle, which will open domestically on 18 February through Buena Vista International Sweden, is staged by RMV Film, a new production outfit set up by former ABBA member Benny Andersson (who also supplied the musical score), his son Ludvig Andersson and Cecilia Norman Mardell

Swedish director Bitte Andersson’s feature debut, Dyke Hard [+see also:
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film profile
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, has been selected for the Berlinale Panorama. “It is a totally crazy B-movie, so getting an international premiere right there feels like we died and went to heaven – is it for real?” mused the director, who wrote the film with Alexi Carpentieri, Martin Borell and Josephine Krieg.

Dyke Hard is the story of a lesbian rock band on its way to a big music competition in the capital, while a mysterious millionaire with an army of ninjas, cyborgs and roller-derby girls will do anything to stop them. The journey becomes an adventure filled with motorcycle gangs, prison uprisings and musical numbers. 

Scheduled for domestic release on 6 March through Njutafilms, it was produced by Andersson, Tomas Michaelsson, Bonnie Skoog Feeney and Martin Borell for Filmlance International, with Lina Kurttila, Peggy Sands and Maria Wågensjö in the leads. 

Danish director Ask Hasselbalch's Antboy – Revenge of the Red Fury [+see also:
trailer
film profile
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, which was on Sunday (1 February) awarded a Robert for Best Film for Children and Youth Audiences – as was its prequel in 2014 – will have its international launch in Berlin’s Generation Kplus section. 

Pelle – the superhero who gained his powers when he was bitten by a mutant ant – is now 13 years old and enjoys his secret life; his greatest wish is to be more than just friends with Ida, but Anti-Christian will stop at nothing to steal her from him, and at the same time a new supervillain, following in the wake of The Flea, has risen to prominence. 

Antboy’s adventures were written by Anders Ølholm, and Oscar Dietz, Nicolas Bro, Amalie Kruse Jensen and Samuel Ting Graf are among the cast of the Eva Jakobsen production for Nimbus Film, which has been in local cinemas via SF Film since 25 December.

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