The first edition of Nordic Festival, a multidisciplinary festival that explores the culture of the Nordic countries, is scheduled to take place in Bucharest between February 13 and February 16.

Under the motto Enchanting Aurora – A Nordic Cultural Expedition, the festival "aims to connect the local environment to the lifestyle, artistic creations, and recent innovations of the five participating countries and to facilitate dialogue and exchange of experience between the Nordic countries and Romania."

The festival, organized by the Embassy of Denmark, the Embassy of Finland, the Consulate of Iceland, the Embassy of Norway, and the Embassy of Sweden in Romania, will continue in March with two days of cultural events in Chisinau.

The program includes a selection of award-winning films, debates with special guests, literary events, concerts, and more. Over the course of four days, the Bucharest audience will have the opportunity to meet and discuss with invited international artists and experts, who will address topics such as education, green transition, or artificial intelligence.

The section dedicated to Nordic cinema covers a selection of eight of the most acclaimed recent Nordic feature films, awarded at major festivals, a documentary about Roy Andersson, Nicolas Winding Refn's cult film Pusher, recently restored, and two screenings for children, among others. The movies are screened at Elvire Popesco Cinema.

"The program reflects the extraordinary stylistic and thematic richness of Nordic cinema, which is among the most exciting in Europe. Despite their diversity, the chosen films are united by a mix of drama and humor, often dark and uncomfortable, and a lucid, sometimes incisive, look at the complicated relationships between people. In line with the progress of Nordic societies in terms of gender parity, the selection includes an equal number of films made by male and female directors," film critic Ionuţ Mareş, the curator of the cinema section, explains.

The festival will open on Thursday, February 13, with Finland's Oscar submission: Family Time by director Tia Kouvo. The film had its world premiere in the Encounters section of the Berlin Film Festival. Another Finish film screened is Miia Tervo's The Missile.

Norway is represented by Armand (2024), the debut of director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel. It won the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the European Discovery - Prix FIPRESCI at the European Film Academy gala. Another hit of Norwegian cinema to be screened is Loveable, the debut of filmmaker Lilja Ingolfsdottir.

The Icelandic films in the selection are Ninna Pálmadóttir's Solitude, in the presence of the director, and Hilmar Oddsson's Driving Mum, winner of the grand prize at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Swedish cinema is present with Ernst De Geer's The Hypnosis and Johanna Bernhardson's The Andersson Brothers, the only documentary in the festival's program.

From the Danish cinema, the festival will screen Martin Skovbjerg's Copenhagen Does Not Exist, which had its world premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival, Nicolas Winding Refn's debut film Pusher. The film will be screened in a restored version, which premiered last year at the Venice Film Festival.

One of the screenings for children is a selection of six educational Norwegian short films from 2018-2019, both animations and live-action films, recommended for children over five years old. The second is the animated feature film Monty and the Street Party, directed by Mikael Wulff and Anders Morgenthaler.

In the section dedicated to debates, the festival proposes five meetings with experts from the Nordic countries on topics such as education and critical thinking, sustainable living in the context of accelerated climate change, social inclusion, the challenges of creative preservation of cultural heritage, and innovation in the context of artificial intelligence. The invited experts from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden will delve into these topics together with Romanian specialists for a dialogue with civil society.

Nordic Festival also proposes a series of literary events that bring the writings of five Nordic classic and contemporary authors to the fore. Maja Lunde (Norway), Jón Kalman Stefánsson (Iceland), Alex Schulman (Sweden), Sofi Oksanen (Finland), and Hans Christian Andersen (Denmark) are the literary stars in focus at five events that will take place at Cărturești Verona and Humanitas Cișmigiu bookstores. Alex Schulman, author of the novels The Survivors and Malma Station, will be present in Bucharest for a discussion about his literary work and not only.

Tickets for the film screenings are on sale on Eventbook, while admission to the debates, literary events, and concerts is free. More on the program here.

(Illustration: the organizers)

simona@romania-insider.com