Selma Vilhunen’s Hobbyhorse Revolution will kick start Malmö’s annual documentary film festival (September 21-26).

To celebrate Finnish cinema and creativity, as well as the country’s centenary of independence, Nordisk Panorama’s director Søren Poulsen and his team have put together a festive programme including a Sauna Cinema session, a Scream Along session with Petri Sirviö - conductor of the choir from the 2003 cult documentary Screaming Men - the screening of 12 Finnish animated short films, spanning 1962-2015, and a masterclass with visual artist Mika Taanila.

Festival attendees will also be invited to a special hobbyhorse jumping try out with leading ladies of Vilhunen’s documentary film. Hobbyhorse Revolution is one of 14 films vying for Nordisk Panorama’s €11,000 Best Documentary award.

Other competing films include Bobbi Jene, Death of a Child, I Called Him Morgan, Last Men in Aleppo and The War Show, all supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond.  Among the 28 films vying for the €7,000 Best Nordic Short award are the Toronto and Annecy top winner The Burden by Niki Lindroth von Bahr, and Palme d’or nominated The Ceiling by Teppo Airaksinen.

In the New Nordic Voices programme, competing films include Walk With Me by Anita Beikpour (2017 Nordic Talents Pitch prize winner), and Ouaga Girls by Theresa Traore Dahlberg, backed by the Fund.  The 55 titles in the three competition programmes were chosen among 562 film submissions. 

The parallel industry event Nordisk Panorama Forum is expecting more than 280 professionals who will watch 24 pitches by top filmmakers such as Eva Mulvad (Family on the Run), Magnus Gertten (With Love), Daniel Dencik (Sport’s Heart) or Mikala Krogh (Scandinavian Star), and another 20 projects will be pitched at individual meetings with decision makers, such as Jorgen Leth’s I Walk (Danish Documentary), Maiden on the Lake by Petteri Saario (Pohjola-filmi) and Yasir, Nadia and Abunori by David Aronowitsch and Ahmed Abdullahi (Story AB). 

More than 250 fresh Nordic films will screen at the Nordisk Panorama Market and six nearly finished films will be pitched as works in progress on September 24:

  • My Heart Belongs to Daddy by Sofia Haugan (Indie Film, Norway), 
  • The Distant Barking of Dogs by Simon Lereng Wilmont (Final Cut for Real, Denmark), 
  • Dacca and the Reindeer by Fridtjof Kjæreng (F(x) Produksjoner Norway), 
  • Entrepreneur by Virpi Suutari (Oktober Oy, Finland), 
  • The Fall of Aleppo by Nizam Najar (Fenris Film, Norway)
  • Kosovo on Trial by Caroline Troedsson (Auto-Images, Sweden). 

The dok.incubator workshop will present eight international projects that have undergone six months development and individual tutoring with international experts. Among the projects are Håvard Bustnes’s Golden Dawn Girls (NO/DE/FI) about the women inside Greece’s far-right nationalist party Golden Dawn, and Giants and the Morning After  by Malla Grapengiesser, Per Bifrost and Alexander Rynéus (SE/FI), about the struggle of a small rural community against overpowering urbanisation.

For further information, check: www.nordispanorama.com