23/02/2016 - Out of 83 applications, the Nordisk Film & TV Fond has picked three sci-fi and four other projects to be developed further at workshops in Helsinki and Haugesund

The Oslo-based Nordisk Film & TV Fond has selected seven new Nordic feature projects out of 83 applications for its second package of the Nordic Genre Boost, which will run throughout 2016: each production will receive €22,000 in development support and access to two residential workshops with tutoring in script development, marketing and sales.

“It is thrilling to see the high level of ambition and originality for this year’s edition,” said Petri Kemppinen, managing director of the Nordisk Film & TV Fond. Boost manager Valeria Richter will organise the workshops at Helsinki’s Night Visions International Film Festival (13-17 April) and at Haugesund’s New Nordic Films (22-25 August) with new guest tutors: Todd Brown, head of acquisitions at Los Angeles’ XYZ Films, and Lindsay Peters, market-industry director at Montreal’s Frontières International Co-Production Market.

The first Nordic Genre Boost films included Danish director Marie Grahto’s sci-fi drama Teenage Jesus, voted Best Pitch at last year’s Nordic Co-Production and Financing Forum in Haugesund; The Troll Hunter [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Andre Øvredal
film profile] director Andre Øvredal’s fantasy/sci-fi title Bright Sky; and Finnish director Taneli Mustonen’s horror Bodom [+see also:
trailer
film profile], now in post-production.

Here is the list of the 2016 Nordic Genre Boost participants:

Denmark
Bente and the Mutant Scouts – Tor Fruergaard. Producer: Claudia Saginario, for Good Company Films. Pitched as an “animation/body horror fun”. Scripted by Sissel Dalsgaard, Fruergaard’s feature debut follows ten-year-old Bente, who is sent to a scout camp, where she has to fight off mutants with her new friends. 

Finland
Birds of a Feather – Hanna Bergholm. Producer: Mika Ritalahti, for Silva Mysterium. Pitched as a “horror-drama”. Written by Ilja Rautsi, Bergholm’s first feature portrays a 12-year-old girl who is a perfectionist and hatches a bird-like doppelgänger to carry out her darkest wishes.

Memory of Water – Saara Saarela. Producers: Misha Jaari and Mark Lwoff, for Bufo. Pitched as a “dystopian drama”. Based on Emmi Itäranta’s novel, the film is set in a futuristic Lapland, where water is a luxury and is rationed by the military. A young woman discovers a secret water source – will she let it run free? 

Norway
Deep Down – Izer Aliu. Producer: Mikael Diseth, for Fantefilm Fiksjon. Pitched as a “sci-fi”. Scripted by Magnus Aspli, it depicts a drilling mission in the Arctic Ocean, which turns up a strange substance that marine biologist Maria must investigate in order to survive.

Substitute – Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken. Producer: Finn Gjerdrum, for Paradox. Pitched as a “sci-fi thriller”. In Jan Trygve Røyneland’s story, memory archivist Eric returns from his sudden death as a so-called human substitute, only to discover that he was murdered.

The Damned – Thordur Palsson. Producers: Kamilla Hodøl and Emilie Jouffroy, for FilmBros. Pitched as a “psychological horror”. Palsson’s feature debut, which he also wrote, is set in 1874: Eva starts losing her perspective in a small Icelandic frontier village, crazed by guilt and superstition.

Iceland
East by Eleven – Olaf de Fleur. Producer: Kristin Andrea Thordardottir, for Poppoli Pictures. Written by de Fleur, the movie revolves around the global UNCC organisation, which has launched a physical memory system to save prisoners’ memories for investigative purposes.