‘Halima,’ ‘Tape,’ ‘The Last Journey’ Triumph at Haugesund Alongside Paola Cortellesi’s ‘There’s Still Tomorrow’: ‘It’s a Modern Masterpiece’
Naima Mohamud’s “Halima” has won the best project award at this year’s Haugesund Film Festival.
Jurors Bartholomew Sammut, Magdalena Banasik and Petri Kemppinen appreciated the project’s “immense amount of warmth and empathy” and “touching and entertaining” pitch.
More from Variety
“[It’s] a film that delves into a story we haven’t yet seen come from Finland,” they argued.
“Halima” – produced by Jani Pösö and Anita Hyppönen for Finland’s It’s Alive Films, also behind Oscar entry “Euthanizer,” and Hannu Aukia for No-Office Films – unspools in the 1990s, when a 10-year-old Somali girl struggles to make friends. Her family, now based in Finland, moves far too often.
“Growing up Muslim and African in an often literally winter-white Finnish small town wasn’t easy – we stuck out like a pride of lions in a parking lot,” recalled Mohamud when talking to Variety. She’s now based in Dublin.
“It was a wild time. The hair! The clothes! I really wanted to go back to when boybands, Tamagotchis and popper pants were all the rage.”
Presented during the Nordic Co-production Market, the award comes with an invitation to participate in the Producers Network in Cannes and a grant of €3,500 ($3,895) in in-kind support from Totalpost Finland.
The Next Nordic Generation Award – amounting to NOK 20,000 ($1,891) and provided by CAPA – was given to the production team behind the best graduation film from the Nordic film schools, “Tape” by Candace Hui Wing Ki. Tobias Klemeyer Smith’s “Whatever City” got an honorable mention.
Meanwhile, Paola Cortellesi’s smash and box-office phenomenon “There’s Still Tomorrow,” set in postwar 1940s Italy, continued to thrill international audiences, picking up the Audience Award and the Eurimages’ Audentia Award, the latter coming with a cash prize of €30,000 ($33,399) and intended to promote greater gender equality in the European film industry.
“There were a lot of beautiful, amazing and different movies we had to watch, but one stood out in particular. The story is touching and intense – you have to see how it ends. And just when you think you know, you slowly realize, with a tear in your eye and a smile, that you were wrong all the time,” said jurors Martin Mentzoni, Olav Andre Åserød Myklebust, Torunn Steensnæs, Lidia Fyllingsnes and Ingvild Konstanse Bentsen.
Their Audentia Award colleagues – Iram Haq, Ståle Stein Berg and Benedicte Danielsen – agreed, calling Cortellesi’s drama a “modern masterpiece”: “We were captivated by the film’s extraordinary formal precision, cinematic playfulness and its unique ability to blend a classic melodrama with both serious themes and humor […] Little did we know that a clever revitalization of Italian neorealism was exactly what we needed today.”
Finally, the Ray of Sunshine Award – for the film that “excites and spreads the most joy” – was given to “The Last Journey,” directed by Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson.
“This is one of those films that manages to put the entire cinema in the same good, electric mood, with tears and laughter intertwined. It’s a fantastic film to experience together, where we truly understand that movies are best in the cinema, and it has been highlighted by everyone who has seen it at the festival,” stated the jurors, predicting it will be “the feel-good documentary of the fall.”
The Awards announcements came as Haugesund’s New Nordic Films market wrapped on Aug. 22. Some takeaways:
Co-Productions on a HighAs indicated by Line Halvorsen, director of New Nordic Films (NNF), ahead of the market, challenges in the Nordics with coin drying out in television and theatrical still struggling post-COVID means that all eyes are on co-productions to make projects come alive. The shift of delegates’ attention from the works in progress to the Nordic co-production session was confirmed by the numbers. A record 80 projects were submitted for the co-production market where a tightly run curated program of 21 projects from 37 participants attracted an audience of 163 people and 222 meetings.
Halvorsen admitted that closing the works in progress slate was challenging, as many strong Nordic titles were not available. But ultimately 15 projects were pitched by 19 participants that drew an audience of 189 and 68 meetings.
U.K. TiesFor the second year in a row, the UK Focus was a hit with producers and co-financiers such as REinvent CEO Rikke Ennis who lauded the presence of English-speaking projects at the Nordic co-production market, or Joe Jeffreys, acquisition manager at the prominent U.K. sales and production banner Hanway Films, for the first time in Haugesund. “Post-COVID, we have broadened our relations with potential partners and upped our co-productions. We want to minimise the financing gaps on our projects, and help foreign producers understand the advantages of our U.K. tax credit structure,” he said. Jeffreys saw the natural connections – notably between Scotland and the Nordics and the appeal of the eco-system of talents and solid production banners in the Nordic region. “For us repping foreign-language fare remains challenging, although we did handle the Sundance winner “Shayda” (toplining “Holy Spider”’s Zar Amir Ebrahimi) and might explore new possibilities,” he said.
Haugesund was also a stopover for Nordic star talents working between the U.K. and the Nordics, such as the Icelander Baltasar Kormákur, whose partly London-set “Touch” was nominated for the Nordic Council Film Prize, or the up-and-coming Finnish-British Mikko Mäkelä who discussed his Sundance hit “Sebastian” at a case study session.
Vintage Year for Co-Pro Slate
Speaking to Variety, the three-member jury of the Nordic Co-production Best Pitch Award Petri Kemppinen (Good Hand Productions/Totalpost, TV Beats Baltic Even), Magdalena Banasik (M-Appeal) and Bartholomew Sammut (the Berlinale) said selecting the winner “Halima” by Naima Mohamud was almost an ordeal. “It was like killing our darlings as we liked all the projects and deliberated until past midnight to find the winner,” said Sammut who underscored the well-curated program, with each film “able to stand out on its own merit”.
“I’ve been attending the co-pro market for years and this was perhaps one of the best selections ever. I feel post-COVID, filmmakers are more willing to tell meaningful stories,” added Kemppinen.
Picking up on Kemppinen’s comment, Banasik stressed the timely topics – family ties, belonging, the threat of populism, mental and physical disabilities – that made each story pressing. “I simply want to see all those films as they resonate in me and tackle questions that many of us ask ourselves,” she said.
Buzz Titles in Pre and Post
Besides the heartfelt and joyful Finnish project “Halima,” the most buzzed about projects at the Co-Pro Market were Sweden’s “Two People Who Fall in Love,” “Love Duet,” Denmark’s “Polaris,” Norway’s “Also a Life”, “Forza Oslo” and “Benedikt & Theo,” Finland’s “The Wednesday Club,” “She Did Not Show Remorse,” the Samí-set “Máttáráhká” and U.K. genre-oriented “The Fell,” “Let it Come Down” and “Unspeakable.”
In the works in progress where family stories – in all its shapes – dominated, hot titles included Norway’s “Stargate,” “Three Men and Vilma,” “Everything Must Go,” the hard-hitting Danish gang crime “Crossing Lines” Stone Age-set “Stranger,” Swedish chiller “The Home” and documentary “Confessions of a Swedish Man.”
The 52nd Norwegian International Film Festival Haugesund will wrap on August 23, 2024. Odd Einar Ingebretsen’s “Enough” was selected as this year’s closing film.
Full list of awards:
Best Project Award
“Halima,” dir. Naima Mohamud
Next Nordic Generation Award
“Tape,” dir. Candace Hui Wing Ki
Special Mention
“Whatever City,” dir. Tobias Klemeyer Smith
Audience Award
“There’s Still Tomorrow,” dir. Paola Cortellesi
Eurimages’ Audentia Award
“There’s Still Tomorrow”
Ray of Sunshine Award
“The Last Journey,” dir. Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
