Nordic Film Festival 2010

And the other films I saw at the Nordic Film Festival 2010:

• Run Sister Run
  Finnish film about two teenage girls - one good, one bad. The good one turns bad, the two of them raise hell, and then the good one turns good again. 
• Caspar and the Forbidden Movie
  Finnish director Caspar Wrede made a film in 1970 about Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich". The world was happy to see it when Solzhenitsyn got the Nobel Peace Prize, but Finland got its knickers in a knot about it and banned it. When the Swedes showed it on TV they cut the power to the senders located on the Aaland Islands so no one could watch. Caspar got mad and returned to the theater. In 1996 (!) the Finns finally resented and broadcast it on TV.
• But Film Is My Mistress
  Another Ingmar Bergmann retrospektive. Reuses bits from other documentaries. Nothing new to see here, move along.
• Beyond
  This one won the festival prize, although I was sick of yet-another-alcoholic-parent and dysfunctional-family. Noomi Rapace proves that she plays the same character in all movies - it was great in the Millenium trilogy, but rather tiring in a different setting. She does have good taste in men, however - her real-life husband Ola Rapace plays her husband in the film, and he sure is good-looking!
• The Place
  An Icelandic youth gets put in jail by mistake, is brutalized, gets saved by his girlfriend.
• The Trainer
  Jens Albinus, the actor who plays the Eagle in that wonderful Danish cop series, is a handball trainer. His goalie suspects that the trainer has jerked him off while he was drunk. Did he or didn't he?
• Dreamland
  This time it is not people getting raped, but the Icelandic countryside, ravished to produce electricity that is consumed by aluminum plants to produce all those cans the Americans pitch after having a cola or a beer. Interesting documentary.

I would have liked to see more, but there was no time. Maybe next year!