You can’t get a more profound difference in landscape and climate from Brisbane than the icy Nordic vistas featured in the films of the 2024 Saxo Scandinavian Film Festival.
With screenings in Brisbane at Palace Barracks and Palace Centro cinemas from July 18 to August 7, the festival features noir films from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
So-called Scandinavian Noir or Nordic Noir is a regular staple on people’s home screens, but festival director Elysia Zeccola points out the benefits of getting out and seeing these films in a cinema.
“To me the Scandinavian Film Festival brings so many visually stunning landscapes to the big screen that just can’t be repeated at home,” Zeccola says. “You have that shared experience in the cinema and you are taken on a journey with these films. You also have the excuse to turn your phone off. When you go and see a movie in a cinema, it’s almost like a luxury to turn the phone off and tune in from beginning to end.”
Opening Night, which includes a pre-film reception with drinks including a Nordic Mule cocktail, features the gripping Norwegian film The Riot (Sulis 1907), directed by Academy Award-nominated Nils Gaup (The Last King). Set in 1907, it’s based on real events where workers struggled in bad condition in dangerous, dark copper mines, giving rise to the powerful Norwegian labour movement.
Zeccola says the story “has an amazing subplot about a boy sent away from his mother”.
“We follow this young boy (played by Otto Fahlgren) for many decades as he earns money to one day see his mother again,” she says. “It’s an incredible story with stunning scenery, and it opens with the Northern Lights. These Nordic directors are so great at pulling the landscapes into a film. It’s almost like another character.”
Another highlight and the festival centrepiece will be popular Finnish film Stormskerry Maja – a story of female empowerment in the 1840s – again featuring stunning cinematography of the wild and windy Åland archipelago.
“It’s just an incredibly beautiful film based on a best-selling novel by Annie Blomqvist. It’s a powerful journey and I just got swept away with it.”
We don’t usually get to see films from Iceland but that’s taken care of too in the festival, with Zeccola recommending the romantic drama Touch (Snerting) from renowned filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur. Following a man’s emotional journey to find his first love, it spans several decades, moving from Iceland to London to Japan.
One of Zeccola’s other favourites from Iceland is the film When the Light Breaks.
“The Icelandic films are unique, and so exciting,” she says. “They’re so exotic. You can’t get further away from Australia than Iceland. It looks almost alien to us. The light and the dark that these characters experience – where it’s always light or always dark for a few months – is so foreign to us.”
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Not to leave out Denmark, there’s the atmospheric thriller Sons (Vogter), featuring the much-loved star of TV series Borgen, Sidse Babette Knudsen. Her character works in a minimum-security ward at a men’s prison but requests to be transferred to maximum security after a new prisoner is admitted there. Thus begins a mysterious game of cat and mouse.
Retrospectives are always a treat at film festivals, showing classics that you rarely get to see in a cinema. This year’s focus is on the collaborations between Swedish actor Liv Ullmannand her countryman, the acclaimed director Ingmar Bergman.
Their hits from the 1960s and ‘70s to screen are Autumn Sonata (co-starring Ingrid Bergman – no relation to Ingmar), Cries and Whispers, Persona and the five-hour Director’s Cut of Scenes From a Marriage. Apparently at the time of its release, that film led to a spike in the Swedish divorce rate. The power of cinema!
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