46. Nordische Filmtage Lübeck / 46th Nordic Film Days Lübeck
November 7, 2004

Eight prizes and a number of Special Mentions were awarded at the 46th Nordic Film Days Lübeck, which attracted 18,000 viewers during the three-and-a-half day festival from November 4th to 7th, 2004. The top award, the NDR Promotion Prize endowed with 12,500 euros and bought for broadcast by the NDR television station, went to the black-and-white, very black comedy ILLUSIVE TRACKS / SKENBART, directed by Peter Dalle from Sweden. The fact that juries sometimes agree with viewers was confirmed by the Audience Award of the Lübecker Nachrichten, which also went to ILLUSIVE TRACKS. The film traces a crazy train ride from Stockholm to Berlin immediately after the end of the war in 1945, underscoring Wittgenstein’s assertion that “nothing is necessarily what it appears to be.”

One of the particular features of this year’s festival was the great number of talented young directors with their first feature films in competition. Three of these directors where honoured by the various juries. The Interfilm Church Prize went to Aksel Hennie, one of Norway’s most prolific actors and in fact their Shooting Star 2004. He wrote, directed and acted in his directorial debut film UNO, which tells of rough life in a run-down part of Oslo. Danish actress Paprika Steen, known primarily from a number of Dogma films, also presented her first feature film as a director, AFTERMATH / LAD DE SMÅ BØRN, which received the Baltic Films Prize as well as a Special Mention by the Interfilm Church jury. The film tells of the struggle of a couple trying to cope with their lives and love after the loss of a child. The Baltic Films jury also gave a Special Mention to the excellent Finnish actor Peter Franzén for his role as a brain-damaged soldier in the film DOG NAIL CLIPPER. The third director to be awarded for his first feature film was Giacomo Campeotto from Denmark, whose children’s film NASTY BRATS / MØGUNGER was selected as Best Film by a jury of four Lübeck children. The adult jury for the Children’s and Youth Film Prize of the Nordic Film Institutes selected Norwegian writer/director Torun Lian’s THE COLOUR OF MILK / IKKE NAKEN as their Best Film, with a Special Mention to the Danish film THE FAKIR / FAKIREN FRA BILBAO by Peter Flinth.

A jury of working people awarded the Documentary Film Prize of the Lübeck Trade Unions to a film about working people: RED WINE SKIRT AND LAMBSKIN COAT – A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT A LAUNDRY / ROTWINEROCK UND LAMMFELLMANTEL by Hannah Metten and Jan Gabbert from Germany.

Finally, a new award for a short film in the Filmforum Schleswig-Holstein was presented for the first time by a software company in northern Germany. The ComLine Prize, endowed with editing software worth 800 euros, went to Britt Dunse for her film NORDEN / NORTH.

The 46th Nordic Film Days also featured a retrospective called “Original & Remake”, showing a number of Scandinavian films which were remade in Hollywood or other places, as well as a children’s film retrospective with films about children and war. The festival also focused on Iceland, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of its film industry this year. Swedish documentary filmmaker Stefan Jarl, famous for his socially committed documentations, held a master class and showed a number of his films. A small window was opened on Polish films, after last year’s presentation of films from western Russia, celebrating the concept of Ars Baltica – the culture of the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea..

The 46th Nordic Film Days earned praise in the media for the high quality of its film programme and the great number of films dealing with difficult situations in everyday life. Next year the festival will take place from November 3 to 6, 2005.