Norwegian Oscar entry Gone with the Woman (Tatt av kvinnen) will open the competition tomorrow (Oct 31) at the Nordic Film Days.

The event in Lubeck, Northern Germany is the largest showcase of Nordic cinema outside Scandinavia.

Gone with the Woman director Petter Næss' and lead actors, Trond Fausa Aurvag and Marian Saastad Ottesen, will attend the screening of the film, which last week (Oct 22) won the Discovery Award for Best Feature at the Hollywood Film Festival.

For this year's five-day event festival director Linde Fröhlich has selected 120 features, documentaries and shorts from the Nordic and Baltic countries, while also celebrating the 20th anniversary of the regional Schleswig-Holstein film forum.

'Lübeck is a good testing ground for German distributors to find out whether a Nordic film works with local audiences,' said festival manager Stine Oppegaard, of the Norwegian Film Institute. 'It also gives them an update on the most recent productions.'

A dozen German distributors have registered for the showcase, including Twin Film, mdc international, Cinecole MAXmedien, Alpha Medienkontor and Galileo Medien, adding representatives of the major television stations.

Following up on the German-Nordic co-production seminar at the Norwegian International Film Festival, MediaDesk Germany will organise a co-production meeting for German, Nordic and Baltic industry representatives.

While preparing for a major retrospective of Scandinavian classics for the festival's 50th anniversary in 2008, the Nordic Film Days will this year screen a selection of Nordic films for children and young audiences, with a homage to Astrid Lindgren, who would have been 100 on Nov 14.

The feature film competition has two Lars von Trier entries, his own The Boss Of It All (Direktøren for det hele) and Jacob Thuesen's The Early Years - Erik Nietzsche Part 1 (Erik Nietzsche - de unge år), about von Trier's period at the Danish National Film School.

There will be a total of 14 contenders for the $18,000 (Eu12,500) top prize. Adding to the sidebars, workshops and seminars, the late Ingmar Bergman will be honoured by a screening of his 1955 feature, Smiles OfA Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende).

Topics