News

The best feature prize went to ’Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person’.

Canadian director and screenwriter Ariane Louis-Seize won the Reflet d’Or for best feature prize for Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person as this year’s Geneva International Film Festival (Giff) drew to a close this weekend (Saturday November 11).

Louis-Seize took home the prize for her film about a female vampire too sensitive to kill who meets a lonely man which carries a cash prize of Chf 10,000, 75% of which goes to the director and 25% to the rights holder who registered the film in the Festival selection. The cash...

The best feature prize went to ’Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person’.

Canadian director and screenwriter Ariane Louis-Seize won the Reflet d’Or for best feature prize for Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person as this year’s Geneva International Film Festival (Giff) drew to a close this weekend (Saturday November 11).

Louis-Seize took home the prize for her film about a female vampire too sensitive to kill who meets a lonely man which carries a cash prize of Chf 10,000, 75% of which goes to the director and 25% to the rights holder who registered the film in the Festival selection. The cash...

Film co-stars Sophie Cookson, Mikkel BoeFolsgaard, Ulrich Thomsen, Emily Beecham and Katie Ashfield.

TrustNordisk has boarded international sales for Stockholm Bloodbath, produced by Viaplay Studios and previously handled internationally by Viaplay Content Distribution.

The cast features Claes Bang, Sophie Cookson, Mikkel BoeFolsgaard, Ulrich Thomsen, Emily Beecham and Katie Ashfield.

The historical action epic – inspired by true events - is set in 1520, when two sisters seek revenge for the men who brutally murdered their family, and get caught up in a political struggle with the mad king Christian II.

Mikael Håfström (Oscar nominated for Evil) directs from a script by Erlend Loe,...

Eili Harboe is burning up social media lately. The talented actor turned heads this spring as the brooding Ebba on the final season of Succession, and she’s bound to keep the intrigue going playing Julie, a beleaguered intern in the upcoming dystopian dark comedy, The Architect, which begins streaming on Viaplay June 1. More on that later.

Let’s chat Ebba, who has given audiences plenty to ponder as Succession heads toward its climactic series finale. Ebba may be a game changer as the Roy kids — Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin), and Shiv (Sarah Snook) — vie for control after the poor health of Daddy Logan (Brian Cox). As GoJo's head of communications, Ebba knows everything about shady Lukas Matsson, played by Alexander Skarsgård, who lays on the slick extra thick here. Ebba is also Lukas’ ex-girlfriend, and she’s already spilled some dirt about her ballsy employee as the shaky Waystar-GoJo acquisition keeps tottering.

Exclusive: Nordic programmer Viaplay has set the slate of projects it will debut on the North American version of its streaming platform this summer.

The crop of projects will include a mix of films and series, including the three-part docuseries Liv Ullmann – A Road Less Travelled, which will debut on June 22. The doc, which features contributions from Cate Blanchett, Jessica Chastain, and Jeremy Irons, offers an intimate portrait of Ullman’s decades-long career.

Synopsis reads: Actor. Director. Script writer. Author. Activist. Honorary Oscar winner. Few women carry all these titles, and even fewer do it successfully to the level of Liv Ullmann for 62 years and counting. This intimate portrait explores the greatness, legacy and longevity in the life of a world-famous artist, but it also explores the struggles all women face in their fight for having a career, a voice and the respect they deserve – a fight that Liv Ullmann...

Italian Disney+ drama The Good Mothers has won the inaugural Berlinale Series award for best TV drama at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival. The U.K.-Italy co-production tells the true story of three women inside the notorious Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate who worked with a female prosecutor to bring down its empire.

Produced by House Productions in the U.K. and Italy’s Wildside, a Fremantle company, The Good Mothers is based on the eponymous novel by Alex Perry. Stephen Butchard adapted the book, and Julian Jarrold (Kinky Boots, Brideshead Revisited) and Elisa Amoroso (Fidelity) directed.

The first two episodes of the six-part series screened at the Berlinale as part of the festival’s sidebar for high-end TV drama.

The first-ever Berlinale Series Award Jury trio of former Yes Studios boss Danna Stern, Moonlight and The Eddy star André Holland, and Danish screenwriter Mette Heeno, said Good Mothers “captured...

Following her stint in Berlinale Series’ competition with “The Architect,” a Norwegian Viaplay limited series set in the near future, Kerren Lumer-Klabbers will focus on a feature film next, which has the working title of “School of Women.”

The project, produced by Søs Thøstesen, will be inspired by her own life, admits the filmmaker. Or rather, the lives of her two mothers.

“They met thanks to the Women’s Liberation Movement in Denmark. One of my mothers grew up in a conservative family, where a woman was supposed to be seen, not heard. The word ‘lesbian’ wasn’t even a part of the vocabulary. She spent her whole life trying to liberate herself from that upbringing,” she said.

Lumer-Klabbers has been busy interviewing women who were a part of the Movement. Including her mothers.

“I told them they can’t say anything wrong and that it’s not about ‘entertaining’ me.

Acclaimed Norwegian helmer Dag Johan Haugerud (“Beware of Children”) has attached actors Thorbjørn Harr as well as Jan Gunnar Røise for the title roles in “Sex,” one of three pics with “Dream” and “Love” that form part of a trilogy about sexuality, longing and transgression.

The project is being produced by Yngve Sæther and Hege Hauff Hvattum for Motlys, in association with Viaplay and the local theatrical distributor Arthaus.

“Sex Dreams Love” will be pitched as a works in progress at the forthcoming Göteborg Film Festival’s parallel Nordic Film Market, which runs Feb. 2-5.

Harr and Røise earned respectively a Norwegian Amanda film award for best supporting actor and best actor for Haugerud’s “Beware of Children,” which snagged a 2020 Dragon Award for best Nordic film at Göteborg.

In “Sex,” set to start shooting this spring, the actors play two colleagues who in different ways are struggling with their sexuality.

Exclusive: BAFTA-nominated People Just Do Nothing star Asim Chaudhry is to lead Nordic streamer Viaplay’s latest original feature, a Norwegian adaptation of Gulraiz Sharif’s Listen Up!

Chaudhry, who has also starred in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and Wonder Woman 1984, will star alongside newcomers Mohammed Ahmed and Liza Haider in the film about 15-year-old Mahmoud, who is looking forward to the summer vacation. When his uncle arrives on a visit from Pakistan, Mahmoud takes on the task of showing him everything that the capital city has to offer and at the same time his younger brother lets him in on a personal secret.

The film will drop on the Nordic streamer following a cinema window next year, joining Gold Run on Viaplay’s slate of Norwegian features. Kaveh Tehrani is directing and the feature is being made in partnership with Motlys and Arthaus.

The novel was last year’s...