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GÖTEBORG 2016 Nordic countries

Strong Nordic presence at the Göteborg Film Festival

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- Opening tonight (29 January) and running until 8 February, Sweden's largest film festival will award both Best Nordic Feature and Best Nordic Documentary

Strong Nordic presence at the Göteborg Film Festival
The Model by Mads Matthiesen

Swedish director Måns Månsson's The Yard [+see also:
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 will tonight (29 January) open the 39th Göteborg Film Festival, prior to screening in the Berlinale Forum, but it is far from being the only local movie that will unspool at the country's largest film festival, which will screen a total of 450 films from 84 countries.

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Besides The Yard and Hanna Sköld's Granny's Dancing on the Table [+see also:
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in the main competition for the SEK 1 million (€108,000) Dragon Award for Best Nordic Feature, Maximilien Van Aertryck's Extra Material, Sara Broos' Reflections, Jerzy Sladkowski's Don Juan [+see also:
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 and Maria Bäck's I Remember When I Die are in the running for the SEK 100,000 (€11,000) Best Nordic Documentary Award. Twelve Swedish features and documentaries will have their world premieres in the special Swedish programme, including Axel Petersén's Under the Pyramid [+see also:
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, Hogir Hirori's The Girl Who Saved My Life [+see also:
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and Peter Modestij's short 6A [+see also:
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. The Swedish section is programmed by Tobias Åkesson.

Denmark has three contenders for Best Nordic Film: the world premiere of Mads Matthiesen's The Model [+see also:
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, Tobias Lindholm's Oscar-nominated A War [+see also:
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interview: Tobias Lindholm
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 and Martin Zandvliet's Land of Mine [+see also:
film review
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interview: Louis Hofmann
interview: Martin Zandvliet
film profile
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. Meanwhile, Nicole N Horanyi's Motley's Law is competing for Best Documentary. Starring Maria Palm, The Model – Matthiesen's second feature – follows a young girl's dangerous journey through the Parisian fashion world, as she develops a deadly obsession with a photographer (British actor Ed Skrein).

Danish director Susanne Bier will receive Göteborg's Nordic Honorary Dragon Award (30 January) at the screening of her Oscar-winning In a Better World [+see also:
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(2010), while Kasper Barfoed's Summer of ‘92 [+see also:
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interview: Esben Smed
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 – which has taken over 315,000 admissions in Denmark – will launch the festival's Soccer Party (2 February), which features music in the Festival Tent (courtesy of Nina Natri) and interviews with Swedish football stars. Denmark has also supplied the closing film, Henrik Ruben Genz's Satisfaction 1720, starring Norwegian actor Jakob Oftebro as Vice-Admiral Tordenskjold, an 18th-century war hero whom we follow after the war is over.

Finnish contenders for the top Göteborg prizes include Aleksi Salmenperä's The Mine [+see also:
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, which will have its world premiere at the gathering. It follows the CEO of a huge nickel and uranium mine in Northern Finland, who finds serious downsides to his job that he had not foreseen. Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola's Return of the Atom is vying for Best Documentary; depicting the building of the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant in a small town of 6,000 inhabitants, it was world-premiered at Toronto.

Icelandic filmmakers are behind eight entries at Göteborg, including Rúnar Rúnarsson's multi-award-winning Sparrows [+see also:
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interview: Atli Óskar Fjalarsson
interview: Rúnar Rúnarsson
film profile
]
in the main competition and Benedikt Erlingsson's The Show of Shows: 100 Years of Vaudeville, Circuses and Carnivals [+see also:
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in the running for Best Documentary. 

Norway, which has recently won three times at Göteborg for Best Nordic Feature, has this year entered Rune Denstad Langlo's Welcome to Norway! [+see also:
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interview: Rune Denstad Langlo
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in the competition, a dramedy about the racist, virtually bankrupt owner of a hotel in the fjells, who wants to open a state-funded refugee centre to save the economy. Margreth Olin's Doing Good is vying for Best Documentary.

Lastly, Swedish director Sanna Lenken, whose feature debut, My Skinny Sister [+see also:
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interview: Sanna Lenken
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(2015), won the Audience Award for Best Nordic Film at last year's Göteborg Film Festival and later a Crystal Bear at the Berlinale, will receive the City of Göteborg's Film Prize at the gathering’s opening on 29 January. In addition, UK director Tom Hooper, whose festival entry The Danish Girl [+see also:
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interview: Paco Delgado
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]
has been nominated for four Oscars, including Best Actor (Eddie Redmayne) and Best Supporting Actress (Alicia Vikander), will accept Göteborg's Honorary Dragon Award at a special screening of the film at the Stora Teatern on 3 February.

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