The 63rd Nordische Filmtage Lübeck takes from 3 – 7 November 2021 in Lübeck, Germany.
Nordische Filmtage Lübeck has one of the longest traditions of any film festival worldwide. It is the only festival in Germany, and the only one on the European continent, which is entirely devoted to the presentation of films from the North and Northeast of Europe. Feature films, documentaries, and short films from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden are presented at this six-day event every year at the beginning of November.
Modern Times Review spoke with Nordische Filmtage Lübeck Artistic Director Thomas Hailer on the challenges, trends, and current Nordische Filmtage Lübeck experience.
How do you define the role of film festival Artistic Director? What is your personal approach toward your responsibilities as one?
I am responsible for the artistic content of the festival. This primarily means selecting the films for the feature film and documentary competitions. Of course, I am in constant exchange with the programmers of the other sections. In this way, a consistent overall programme with numerous formal and thematic cross-references emerges in the course of the process.
Of particular importance for all of us is the targeted approach to young audiences, to whom a separate section is dedicated here in Lübeck and who are given additional incentives to visit the cinema between the festival editions with numerous participation projects. Then there are decisions such as the Homage for creatives with a long-standing relationship with our festival. A format that has been rather irregular in the programme so far and which we now want to resume regularly with the tribute to the wonderful Danish actress Trine Dyrholm.
Of particular importance for all of us is the targeted approach to young audiences
Nordische Filmtage Lubeck is a unique festival for us in the sense that it is 1. Not solely a documentary festival and 2. Is programmed around a region as opposed to a genre. Can you talk a little about the place of Nordische Filmtage Lubeck within the cultural infrastructure of the region? What were its origins vs, how it is presented today?
The Nordic Film Days are an audience festival in the best sense of the word. Its origins go back to the initiative of a local film club in the 1950s, the city of Lübeck as organiser joined in a little later. It is the most important film festival in the region and by the way, the only festival worldwide to focus exclusively on films and series from Scandinavia and the Baltic States, supplemented by a selection of films made in the north of Germany. This mixture is still received with great enthusiasm by the audience today. Over the years, however, the focus on the countries we present has also become increasingly interesting for the professional audience. The Lübeck Meetings bundle the interests of the industry and attracted almost 600 industry guests at the last regular festival in 2019.
Of course, we would be amiss to not bring up the pandemic and how it has affected events over the past two years. How have you adapted the festival to its 2021 version, learning what you did from 2020?
The great and encouraging insight from the purely digital festival 2020 was that our audience remained loyal to the Nordic Film Days online as well. In the end, almost as many films were watched as in the last classic edition of the festival in 2019, so it was clear to us early on that we want to enable a hybrid festival experience in 2021. Fortunately, we can now already fully utilise the cinemas again in November. For all those for whom this is still too early or who cannot or do not want to make the journey to Lübeck in this transitional year, there is a nice selection with about 80% of our programme on our VOD platform.
As a multi-genre festival, can you speak a little about how you approach the development of the entire programme. Meaning, what makes a balanced programme for an event such as Nordische Filmtage Lubeck.
As mentioned above, the festival appeals to a broad spectrum of audiences with its traditional sections. In addition, the Nordic Shorts offer a radically curated insight into the work of young filmmakers and thus provide a glimpse into the future of cinema every year. Many directors whose names are known to everyone today were represented in the Nordic Film Days programme with short films at the beginning of their careers. The retrospectives also contribute to the diversity of the programme. Under the title SING A SONG, this year’s programme is about pop and pop musicals from the 1960s to the 90s. Here you will also have the opportunity to re-encounter early documentary works by the Kaurismäki brothers or Fridrik Thor Fridriksson. In addition, there is a small but fine selection of current drama series, for which the Nordic countries have always been an outstanding source. All in all, an attractive cross-section of Nordic filmmaking for all age and interest groups is created year after year.
The great and encouraging insight from the purely digital festival 2020 was that our audience remained loyal to the Nordic Film Days online as well.
Speaking specifically about documentary, do you have a seminal film, filmmaker, or filmography within the genre?
Nowadays there is always talk of hybrid films, staged documentaries and feature films with documentary elements. When I look around in Nordic film history, I notice that directors from this region have been moving between these borders for quite some time. Just think of the Dogma 95 movement, which wanted to avoid any artificiality in its feature films in order to find a new authenticity. Many directors from the region started as documentarists or continued the neorealist approach, for example, Bo Widerberg. Looking at the films in our current edition, I see that many directors are experimenting with hybrid formats.
