Nordisk Film & TV Fond has announced its six nominees for the winner of the The Nordic Council Film Prize. The Finnish nominee is Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves, which charmed audiences at last year’s Love & Anarchy.
The Nordic Council Film Prize is awarded to feature films produced in the Nordic countries that showcase high artistic quality. The six nominees are screened at Helsinki International Film Festival – Love & Anarchy 19 to 29 September.
In the running for the prize money (300 000 DNK or around 41 000 euros) are four fictional films and two documentary features. Iceland’s Touch is a moving tale that spans decades and crosses borders to tell the story of an Icelandic man who returns to London after 50 years to find his first love. Sweden’s nominee Crossing, written and directed by And Then We Danced-director Levan Akin, pulses with a strong sense of place, as the music of remote Georgian coastal towns transports the film’s protagonists into new communities.
Twice Colonized, from Greenland, is an intimate film documenting the life of Inuit activist and lawyer Aaju Peter as she fights for her people and advocates for both societal and personal decolonization. In The Son and the Moon, Danish-Iranian filmmaker Roja Pakari depicts her life as an incurably ill mother of a young boy and considers the importance of culture, family and identity. Norway’s Sex, from director Johan Haugerund, is a warm and witty comedy that deconstructs questions of masculinity through the candid conversations of two middle-aged chimney-sweeps and their families. Aki Kaurismäki’s gentle tragicomedy Fallen Leaves tells the tentative love story between two lonely workers drifting in the stormy seas of odd jobs.
Fallen Leaves premiered as part of Cannes Film Festival’s main competition selection, where it won the Jury Prize. The film has been seen by over 300 000 people in Finland, making it the biggest Finnish release of 2023. Over 1.5 million people have seen the film in theatres worldwide.
The first Nordic Council film prize was awarded to Aki Kaurismäki’s The Man Without a Past in 2002. Other previous winners include films such as You, the Living (2008), Antichrist (2009), Beyond (2011), Virgin Mountain (2015), Louder Than Bombs (2016), Flee (2021), Lamb (2022) and Empire (2023).
The six nominees have been chosen by the national boards on the basis of their high quality, their roots in Nordic culture, and their artistic originality which marks them as distinctly fascinating pieces of art tied to their surrounding contexts. The members of the 2024 Finnish board are Mikaela Westerlund (chair), Kalle Kinnunen and Kaisu Isto.
Iceland’s public broadcasting company RÚV will announce the winner of the Nordic Council Film Prize online, on Tuesday 22 October. The Nordic Council prizes for literature, children’s and young people’s literature and music, as well as the Environment Prize, will also be announced on the same occasion.