With these festivals now over, we highlight some of the films that have been on our Nordic radar for some time and should definitely be making an entry onto your Nordic watchlists!

It is worth noting that there were obviously some other BIG movies (hello there Pleasure, Compartment No6, The Gravediggers Wife) shown there, but being only able to access this virtually as press we sadly didn’t get too much access, however that meant we could dive in and scour through a number of other titles to share with you and in doing so unearthed some exciting gems!

Gritt
Norway | Dir: Itonje Søimer Guttormsen

Norway’s Gritt was one of the first movie’s we saw at the festival and we were very much impressed by the absolutely incredible performance from it’s lead Birgitte Larsen, who kept us glued to our screen for the almost two-hour runtime.

To describe Gritt as a film is a difficult task – there are multiple themes being tackled and we were completely wrong when we expected a dark comedy, although there are some laughs in places (whether we were supposed to or not).

One that stuck with us most was that days after watching the film we were sat having a coffee and one of us said: “I wonder what Gritt is up to now”. That says it all in our opinion.

The Blind Man Who Did Not Want To See Titantic
Finland | Dir: Teemu Nikki

This is one film that I will find hard to forget. It is an absolute triumph and such a thought-provoking (and intense) experience. You can read a more in-depth piece in our spotlight on the film HERE.

Future Remains
Finland | Dir: Anna-Karin Grönroos

We have embraced and enjoyed a number of documentaries over the course of this year – in fact almost outnumbering the new feature films!

It felt only right to catch up with some more and in particular this story caught our attention. It’s about industrial designer Henrik Wahlforss, who quit his job and decided to write a book about his predictions for the future.

The outcome is quite startling given he wrote this between 1970-1980! Wahlforss had an amazing ability to foresee where the world was headed in terms of technology and design, spotting trends and opportunities long before they happened, but many didn’t take him seriously.

Anna-Karin Grönroos puts together this piece with the involvement of Wahlforss’ family and looks back over his ideas and struggles to get his concepts understood at the time.

Feature by Alex Minnis