22/09/2015 - The 57th edition of the German festival, which last year programmed 172 films, will take place from 4-8 November

Iceland’s submission for the Oscar nomination for Best Foreign-language Film, the tragicomedy Rams [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Grimur Hakonarson
film profile] by Icelandic director Grímur Hákonarson, which also features on the selection list for the European Film Awards, will open the 57^th Nordic Film Days in Lübeck, set to unspool from 4-8 November. Last year, the German festival showed 172 films and recorded 29,000 admissions. 

“The Icelanders are powerful storytellers, and Rams is the best example of this – a human drama, filled with empathy for the protagonists, as well as odd situations and comic moments, all set in a spectacular landscape,” said the festival’s artistic director for the last 20 years, Linde Fröhlich, who will receive an honorary membership of Germany’s Interfilm for “linking film culture to an ethical, aesthetic and Protestant perspective”.

Hákonarson’s second feature was launched at the Cannes International Film Festival, where it won the Un Certain Regard prize; it was also awarded at the Transilvania International Film Festival in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) and at the European Film Festival in Palic (Serbia). The director will come to Lübeck with his lead actors, Sigurdur Sigurjónsson and Theodór Júlíusson. 

In the largest showcase outside Scandinavia dedicated to Scandinavian cinema, adding films from the Baltic states and Northern Germany, the director of the Retrospective section, Jörg Schöning, will present Northern Journeys: Travelogues & Road Movies. The programme will include such delights as Swedish directors Axel Lindblom and Alf Sjöberg’s silent film The Strongest (1929), screened to a musical accompaniment by the Lübeck Academy of Music, in addition to film treasures from Norway’s National Library in Oslo and movies by Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman, Finland’s Mika and Aki Kaurismäki and Auli Mantila, and Iceland’s Friðrik Þór Friðriksson and Katrin Ottarsdóttir.