Already twenty years !
The Nordic Film Festival is celebrating this year its 20th birthday.
It's time for assessments but also for future prospects.
Created in 1988, the Festival was cut out to make us discover the new talents we sensed but also to go back on film industries that had lived ≤Golden Years≤ at the start of the XXth century.
For example, it is not known enough that Nordisk Film, a Danish production company, was the most prolific in Europe at that time.
The Nordic countries, well known for their literature have very early on adapted for the screen their great writers, several of whom were awarded the Nobel Prize.
For several years, Ingmar Bergman and Carl Theodor Dreyer have been the two most famous directors. At the start of the Festival were already surfacing Aki Kaurismaki and Lars von Trier whose films had started to be distributed in France and other countries. Today, a lot of talented directors are yet to be discovered.
Movies are revealing of countries, societies, cultures, customs and traditions, and year after year the audience has become acquainted with diverse Nordic identities.
We have also wished to create an event in relation with the History of our region, which experienced, over a thousand years ago, a strong Nordic impregnation. It is in Rouen that Rollon was converted to Catholicism in the cathedral where today lie his remains. There is, for that matter, a wealth of historic sites in Normandy, testimonies of these times.
At the time of the Festival's creation, few were those who strongly believed in the success of such an event. 19 years later, we are proud we had our say to the meeting between the audience and these films from the North. Because there lies our main satisfaction : the loyalty of the audience that has been following us since the first edition of this beautiful adventure.
For this 20th Festival, we offer you, among others, movies that have had a great impact on us, our heart-throbs for 20 years and of course a programme… to discover !
Jean-Michel Mongrédien