Danish films The Guilty, Holiday and Icelandic film And Breathe Normally have been selected for Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition.

The Guilty was first pitched at Copenhagen’s Nordic Talents 2015 where director Gustav Möller and producer Lina Flint won the Special Mention Award. Jacob Cedergren plays police officer turned alarm dispatcher Asger Holm who answers an emergency call from a kidnapped woman. With the phone as his only tool, Asger enters a race against time to solve a crime that is far bigger than he first thought. The film cleverly uses sound to play with the audience’s imagination, allowing them to create in their own mind the scenes of the escalating kidnapping.

The Guilty was produced by Nordisk Film’s SPRING talent development scheme, in collaboration with Nordisk Film Production, and support from The Danish Film Institute’s New Danish Screen. TrustNordisk handles world sales. The film will be released domestically in June 14, 2018.

Holiday is directed/co-written by Swedish-born Isabella Eklöf, a graduate from the National Film School of Denmark like Möller. The love triangle/gangster film set in Bodrum on the Turkish Riviera, features the trophy girlfriend of a petty drug lord who starts a tentative flirt with a young sailor. Victoria Carmen Sonne (Winter Brothers) plays against Thijs Römer and Lai Yde. The film is produced by Denmark’s Apparatur, in co-production with the Netherland’s Oak Motion Pictures and Sweden’s Common Ground Pictures, in association with the Danish Film Institute, Eurimages, Film i Väst, the Netherlands Film Fund. Holiday was pitched at Haugesund’s works in progress last August.

And Breathe Normally is directed by Ísold Uggadóttir, a former alumna from New York’s Columbia University, multiple-award winner for her shorts Family Reunion, Ultras Reykjavik and Clean. The story centres on an intimate relationship that develops between an Icelandic mother and a refugee woman from Guinea-Bissau, as both strategize to get their lives back on track. Kristín Thóra Haraldsdóttir and Babetida SadjoIt have the title roles. The film was produced by Skúli Malmquist of Zik Zak Filmworks, in coproduction with Belgium’s Entre Chien et Loup and Sweden’s Cinenic Films, with support from the Icelandic Film Centre and the Swedish Film Institute. The Match Factory handles world sales.

A total of 110 feature length films from 29 countries were selected for the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. Festival founder Robert Redford said: “The work of independent storytellers can challenge and possibly change culture, illuminating our world’s imperfections and possibilities. This year’s Festival is full of artfully-told stories that provoke thought, drive empathy and allow the audience to connect, in deeply personal ways, to the universal human experience.”

The festival held in Park City, Salt Lake City and at Sundance Mountain Resort, runs January 18–28, 2018.