Seven projects to receive Nordic Genre Boost support

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Seven titles have been selected by the Nordisk Film & TV fund for the second round of its Nordic Genre Boost initiative.

Three sci-fi films, City State director Olaf de Fleur’s new project East By Eleven, Returning Home director Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s Substitute and To Guard A Mountain director Izer Aliu’s Deep Down, have been picked.

Also on the list are Thordur Palsson’s debut feature psychological horror The Damned, Saara Saarela’s dystopian drama Memory Of Water, Hanna Bergholm’s horror-drama Birds Of A Feather and Tor Fruergaard’s animation Bente And The Mutant Scouts.  

A total of 83 titles applied for the second round of the initiative, with the selected projects receiving a grant of $23.3k (NOK 200,000) for development support, access to two residential workshops with script tutoring, and assistance with marketing and sales.

As per the 2015 inaugural edition, the first workshop will be held in conjunction with Helsinki’s Night Visions International Film Festival (April 13-17) and the second during New Nordic Films in Haugesund (August 22-25), where the seven projects will also be pitched to potential co-financiers.

This year’s guest tutors include Todd Brown, head of acquisitions for XYZ Films, and Lindsay Peters, market and industry director at the Frontières International Co-Production Market.

The 2016 Nordic Genre Boost projects:

Bente And The Mutant Scouts (Denmark, animation)

Body Horror Fun. First feature by Tor Fruergaard, written by Sissel Dalsgaard and produced by Claudia Saginario (Good Company Films). Bente (10) is sent to scout camp and has to fight off mutants with her new friends; a disgusting, fun and absurd universe.

Birds Of A Feather (Finland, horror-drama)

First feature by Hanna Bergholm, written by Ilja Rautsi and produced by Mika Ritalahti (Silva Mysterium). A 12-year-old perfectionist girl, Tinja, hatches a bird-like doppelgänger to carry out all her buried worst impulses.

Deep Down (Norway, sci-fi) T

Third feature by Izer Aliu, written by Magnus Aspli and produced by Mikael Diseth (Fantefilm Fiksjon). A drilling mission in the Arctic Ocean turns up a strange substance that marine biologist Maria must uncover in order to survive what has been unleashed.

East By Eleven (Iceland, sci-fi)

New feature by writer/director Olaf de Fleur, produced by Kristin Andrea Thordardottir (Poppoli Pictures). A global organization, UNCC, have launched a physical memory system to manifest memories from prisoners for investigative purposes.

Memory Of Water (Finland, dystopian drama)

New feature by Saara Saarela based on the eponymous novel by Emmi Itäranta, co-written by Ilja Rautsi and produced by Misha Jaari and Mark Lwoff (Bufo Ltd). In a futuristic Lapland, water is a luxury, rationed by the military. When a young woman discovers a secret water source she has to decide if she is ready to risk her life by letting the water run free.

Substitute (Norway, sci-fi thriller)

New feature by Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken, written by Jan Trygve Røyneland and produced by Finn Gjedrum (Paradox Rettigheter). Memory archivist Eric returns from his sudden death as a so-called human substitute, all new and ingested with most of his memories, only to discover that he was murdered.

The Damned (Norway, psychological horror)

First feature written and directed by Thordur Palsson and produced by Kamilla Hodøl and Emilie Jouffroy (FilmBros Productions). Set in 1874 in an Icelandic frontier village, Eva starts losing her perspective as group mentality and survival instinct trump human ethics in a community crazed by guilt and superstition.