Norwegian director Bard Breien's feature debut The Art of Negative
Thinking (Kunsten A Tenke Negativt) received the $18,000 NDR Film Prize at the 49th Nordic Film Days in the German city of Lubeck.

The film, about a man coming to terms with disability, previously won Breien the best director Crysal Globe at Karlovy Vary.

The award could support a German release,' said Norwegian producer Dag Alveberg, of Maipo Film & TV-produksjon, adding that the film has just been successfully launched in the Czech Republic.

600 film professionals - 200 press - attended the five-day festival of
Nordic and Baltic films, where Swedish-Danish director Ake Sandgreb's
To Love Somebody (Den Man Alskar) took both the Baltic Film Prize and
the Interfilm Church Prize. To Love Somebody is Sandgren's first
Swedish film for 12 years.

The Nordic film institutes' award for Best Children and Youth Film went
to Sweden's Leaps & Bounds (Hoppet), by Norwegian director Petter
Næss, also in Lubeck with Gone with the Woman (Tatt Av Kvinnen).
Lubeck's own children's jury preferred Finnish director Raimo O Niemi's
Mystery Of The Wolf (Suden Arvoitus).

At the award ceremony the Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein Film Fund gave its$29,000 North German Film Prize to Fatih Akin's The Edge of
Heaven (Auf Der Anderen Seite).

Producer-writer-director-actor Detlev Buck received a $14,500 honour for redefining the genre of Heimat-film.

Topics