Funding Provided By
Nordic Lights Film Festival 2013
From its inception in the summer of 2008, the purpose of the Nordic Lights Film Festival – Twin Cities is to highlight contemporary cinematic treasures of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, and to support Minnesota’s historic Scandinavian ties while giving a modern look into new sides of Nordic cultures. We hope to affirm cultural ties for those with Scandinavian roots while at the same time introducing an often overlooked genre, Nordic film, to local audiences.
The Nordic Lights Film Festival attracts film goers of all ages captivated by the longstanding film making traditions of the North. It also provides an opportunity to share the richness and diversity of the Nordic cultures through the lens of film. Hosted by The Film Society on Screen 3 at St. Anthony Main Theatre in Minneapolis Feb. 8 – 14, 2013 the festival will include a variety of feature-length and short films. The festival will also provide opportunities to mingle and interact, helping to connect our local Nordic community with fellow film enthusiasts.
Ticket Info: $8.50 General Admission; $6.00 Seniors/Students; $5.00 Film Society Members
To purchase tickets online, click on the individual showtimes next to the film titles below, or head over to the St. Anthony Main Theatre's website for a full listing.
Wednesday, 2/13 at 9:30
Directed by:
Thirty-eight-year-old bodybuilder Dennis has never had a girlfriend and lives with his mother in a suburb of Copenhagen. After disappointment in his quest for true love in Denmark, he decides to try his luck in Thailand at the advice of his uncle. Knowing his mother would never accept another woman in his life, he lies to her before traveling to hectic Pattaya, Thailand, where he finds the women too intrusive for his naïve ideals on what love should be. At the peak of his culture shock is when he unexpectedly meets the Thai woman Toi.
Tuesday, 2/12 at 9:45
Directed by:
Two wildly inappropriate friends run amok through the Danish countryside, plowing through endless awkward confrontations and unspeakable debaucheries. Hopelessly wrongheaded Frank “kidnaps” the 12-year-old nephew of his pregnant girlfriend in a desperate attempt to prove his fatherhood potential, joining sex-crazed Casper on his secret adulterous weekend canoe trip. Rampaging through brothels, hospitalizations, armed robberies and even prison, the trio paddles downstream from one chaotic misadventure to the next, all culminating in a surprisingly sentimental portrait of friendship and a final shocking reveal that you’ll never be able to unsee.
Monday, 2/11 at 5:15
Wednesday, 2/13 at 7:15
Directed by:
In a casualty evacuation center behind the frontline of the battlefield between Finland and Russia, fallen soldiers of the Second World War are gathered to be sent home. The continuous ritual of thawing, tidying and dressing the deceased isolates the group of four men and three women running the center from the surrounding reality. The dead are whispering; they are guided to the netherworld, and visions are granted to those who know how to look.
(The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System)
Monday, 2/11 at 4:00
Directed by:
Through classroom visits and interviews with students, teachers, parents, administrators, and government officials, this 60-minute documentary takes viewers inside the world’s finest secondary education that lies within an otherwise quiet, humble country: Finland. Dr. Wagner, an educator and author of the best-selling book, “The Global Achievement Gap,” explores and explains Finland’s success and reveals the surprising factors that contribute to Finland’s #1 rank.
Wednesday, 2/13 at 5:15
Directed by:
After retiring from his job as a janitor, Hannes is faced with the rest of his life. Estranged from his family and with hardly any friends, Hannes is living in a faded relationship with his wife when a series of events forces him to realize he needs to adjust his life if he wants to help someone he loves. Volcano is a love story of someone who has to deal with the choices of the past and the difficulties of the present in order to embrace the future.
Monday, 2/11 at 7:45
Directed by:
In a small Norwegian town, a group of teenage girls is coming of age in a place they only want to escape. Alma is discovering her own sexuality and is experiencing desires she never felt before. Daydreaming and phone sex is the only outlet for her curiosity. When her crush, Artur, makes a move on her at a party, the life she already dreads only becomes worse. Turn Me On, Dammit is a bold film with captivating frames and music, and authentic dialogue that speaks to the confusing turmoil of growing up.
Tuesday, 2/12 at 5:45
Directed by:
Roger is a charming scoundrel and Norway's most accomplished headhunter. He lives a life of luxury well beyond his means and chooses to subsidize his expensive lifestyle through stealing highly prized art. When his beautiful wife, an art gallery owner, introduces him to a former mercenary in the possession of an extremely valuable painting, he decides to risk it all in order to obtain it, and in doing so, he discovers something which makes him a hunted man.
Saturday, 2/9 at 12:00
Tuesday, 2/12 at 4:00
Directed by:
An affectionate and truthful account, this documentary tells the story of two intertwined lives that experienced the full spectrum of emotions together, survived extraordinary times, and left us with enduring creations as proof of the passion of their relationship both on and off-screen. Told entirely from Liv Ullmann’s point of view through interview, this biopic of a legendary relationship is constructed as a collage of images and sounds from the timeless Ullmann-Bergman films, behind-the-scenes footage, still photographs, passages from Liv’s book Changing and Ingmar’s personal letters to Liv. This film is a candid look, not only at two of the greatest artists of our time, but also at two human beings, friends and soul mates.
Tuesday, 2/12 at 7:45
Directed by:
A morning just before Christmas, Leena (Noomi Rapace), 34, receives a phone call from a hospital in her childhood hometown telling her that her mother is dying. After fighting all her life to let go of her grief over her lost and dark childhood, this news takes her on a journey to face her mother for the first time in her adult life, and forces her to deal with her past to be able to move on.
Thursday, 2/14 at 5:00
Directed by:
Kenneth is 26, living in a suburb of Oslo, and is gay. After a long process of pondering his relationships with his family, his love-life, and himself, he has decided to have a child alone. Because of Norway’s anti-surrogacy laws, he has to search outside Norway to find a woman to carry his child. He finds a surrogate in Kansas, and travels to the USA to meet his little son Isaiah.
Directed by:
"Hello my name is Lesbian", the first ever Danish made documentary shows modern lesbian lifestyle and culture in all it's diversity as it is lived in one of the most sexually liberated countries in the world.
Wednesday, 2/13 at 4:00
Directed by:
Marja Bål Nango wants her future children to be of Sámi origin, both maternally and paternally. But why does she want that? And is it really so bad being “half this and half that?” The filmmaker interviews six young people that in one way or another belong to two cultures, in search of answers to her own questions about being multicultural.
Directed by:
Inger Marja and her best friend Kathrina are from two different cultures: the indigenous Sámi culture and the Norwegian culture. Inger Marja is dreaming about the perfect Christmas with the perfect Christmas tree, like the big tree they have at Kathrina's house. But her alcoholic mother can't afford to buy a real tree. Perhaps the fantasy about Christmas is sometimes better than the Christmas itself? The Christmas Troll takes us behind the facade, bringing us closer to a sore and difficult reality that is extra visible during the holidays. This reality exists in the world’s most prosperous countries for many – no matter their culture.
Directed by:
After living in the south for many years, Christian is visiting his home village with his fiancée allegedly to look at churches to get married in. But what are the true reasons for the visit? A strong visual and evocative story about a young man's inner struggle, the sorrow of a love that once was and the balance with the new love that has occurred, Before She Came, After He Left gives audiences a glimpse of how difficult the identity question is in some cultures, but only from the outside.
Saturday, 2/9 at 5:45
Sunday, 2/10 at 9:30
Thursday, 2/14 at 7:00
Nesting Place (Norway) - 14 min
Tick Tick Boom (Denmark) - 29 min
Two Birds (Iceland) - 15 min
Lifelong Love (Norway) - 13 min
Monday, 2/11 at 9:45
Thursday, 2/14 at 8:30
Lonely Together (Norway) - 15 min
So it goes (Finland)- 29 min
The Date (Finland) -7 min
The Twin (Sweden) -29 min
Seeds of the Fall (Sweden)- 17 min