NORD culminates at Göteborg Film Festival

Since NORD - New Nordic Voices was born in 2022, film school students from Denmark, Norway and Sweden have been working together to cultivate and strengthen a cross-national network. And when the Gothenburg Film Festival kicks off at the end of January, the students will finally present the projects they have worked on along the way. In this interview, Lilja Ingolfsdottir and Josefine Kirkeskov point out the things they deem particularly valuable about the pan-Nordic collaboration.

NORD is really a culmination of something that has existed for a long time. Because in the Nordic region, we have a long and rich tradition of developing stories together. Internationally recognized and critically acclaimed films and TV series such as 'The Bridge', 'Scandinavian Star', 'Triangle of Sadness' and 'The Worst Person in the World' are all results of cross-national collaborations in terms of artistic development, production and financing.

And with NORD, this tradition has been formalized to promote lasting collaborations across the National Film School of Denmark, the Norwegian Film School and the Department of Film and Media at Stockholm University of the Arts. But also to promote new Nordic storytellers and contribute to the consolidation of the distinctive Nordic art of storytelling. And, of course, to investigate whether such an art even exists.

The project started in the spring of 2022 at the initiative of the National Film School of Denmark and took flight thanks to generous support from the A.P. Moller Foundation. Through workshops and seminars in all three countries, future filmmakers have been given the opportunity to cultivate a strong network, spanning almost three years.

The Göteborg Film Festival in January 2025 will be the culmination of the project. Students from the three schools will present the Work-In-Progress projects they have worked on during NORD's lifetime to a live industry audience.

An open creative space

To help us learn more about everything that made the program special and why a pan-Nordic collaboration is important, we teamed up with Lilja Ingolfsdottir and Josefine Kirkeskov. Lilja is actually in Copenhagen as part of a major promotional tour for her critically acclaimed feature film debut 'Lovable', but she is also a teacher at the screenwriting program at the Norwegian Film School, and has been involved with NORD since the project began. Josefine Kirkeskov teaches directing at the National Film School of Denmark and has been part of the project for a year. Both will prepare their students for the pitch round at the Göteborg Film Festival in January.

And the two film school teachers were in perfect tune with each other when they met up on a dark, windy evening at the National Film School of Denmark. Because there is one thing in particular that the project has highlighted the value of.

“There's great value in coming together in a creative project where you don't really have anything at stake. So you get to know each other in projects where you play into it and have fun with it,” says Josefine Kirkeskov. Lilja Ingolfsdottir agrees:

“I think the most important thing has been to be part of a big creative community where there's nothing at stake. And that has been amazing to be a part of.”

And as a student at one of the three Nordic film schools, you may need a free, carefree creative space to step into. Because a competitive atmosphere tends to creep into everyday life at the schools, where the students' involvement in an array of projects holds sway.

NORD has given the students an opportunity to step out of their fixed groups at home and open up to new artistic communities and contexts. And according to the teachers, this has given rise to greater creative joy, also because the projects have not been tied to a performance:

“There is no pressure to perform. It's about trust and doing something together in a free creative space. And you can see that in their projects. In NORD, you've been able to let your creativity flow more freely,” says Lilja Ingolfsdottir. She pauses to think for a moment before adding:
“I think the students have been more gentle and affectionate towards each other than they might be in the schools.”

A timely creative community

And for the two teachers, creative interaction is at the heart of the project. But it is clear that NORD was also launched to counter the reality that content producers in small countries are squeezed from many sides. Therefore, there is reason to unite in the Nordic region, especially because the countries - in addition to a rich cultural history - also share a number of common features in terms of funding and financing. So there is a particular need to strengthen independent Nordic film, which is why NORD can be said to be a timely professional community. In reality, it may seem crazy that the exchange between the three countries has not been more formalized until now.

Josefine Kirkeskov also wishes NORD had existed when she was a newly graduated film director from the National Film School of Denmark about to make her own feature film debut.

“The funny thing is that my first feature film starred a Norwegian and a Swedish actor. So I went out and found some collaborators myself, but I kind of had to start from scratch. And it would definitely have been great for me to have had someone I could call. Someone who was in the same place as me. That would have been great instead of it being completely unknown to me,” she says and continues:

“And the non-committal aspect of NORD is a good way to get to know each other, because then you can draw on each other when you have a specific movie and therefore really have something at stake. Like I did.”

And if Lilja Ingolfsdottir is to be believed, there are also indications that the industry is beginning to realize that more open and free creative processes are an unconditional benefit to the finished product.
“I had a meeting at Nordisk Film today where they were very interested in how to make a space that is accessible, generous and creative. And then we discussed 'Skam' [Norwegian drama series ed.-], which somehow succeeded so well because there was nothing at stake. And you often manage to unleash more creativity when there is less at stake.”

On January 31st, we'll see if tomorrow's 'Skam' project is on the cards when the students pitch their projects to the industry. Of course, less could suffice. In any case, there are indications that NORD, with its facilitation of the free creative space and its strengthening of Nordic storytelling, also has a right to exist on the other side of the Göteborg Film Festival.

ABOUT NORD - New Nordic Voices

Nord is an ambitious collaboration project between film schools in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, supported by the A.P. Moller Foundation. The collaboration was initiated in the spring of 2022 by the National Film School of Denmark, and has run over a three-year development period until January 2025, with the clear expectation of creating a lasting collaboration across the three film schools and eventually with the other film schools in the rest of the Nordic region.
The project has aimed to promote new, strong Nordic storytellers and thus consists of meetings between students from the three schools' screenwriting, production and directing programs. Each meeting consists of teaching and development workshops as well as a continuous seminar under the title 'Nordic Think Tank,' where a wide range of invited speakers from different fields such as literature, art, film, research and politics each time contribute to sharpen the discussion and understanding of Nordic culture and contemporary life.

The project has consisted of the following:

• NORD I: Workshop and Nordic Think Tank I: Copenhagen, fall 2022
• NORD II: Workshop and Nordic Think Tank II: Lillehammer, spring 2023
• NORD III: Workshop and Nordic Think Tank III: Stockholm, fall 2023
• NORD IIII: Concept development: Copenhagen, spring 2024
• NORD IIIII: Presentation, Göteborg Film Festival, 2025