“Our focus should be on the present, we should focus on each other”

At the Göteborg Film Festival, film schools students in Denmark, Norway and Sweden will show us all the results of what they have worked on together across the Nordic borders. And even though pitching in front of an international industry audience might prompt sweaty palms, it has never been at the heart of NORD. At least not if you ask Nawa Alani from the National Film School of Denmark, Yousra Said from Stockholm University of the Arts and Ingvild Dahlgren from the Norwegian Film School. They have been part of NORD since the beginning of the project, and in this interview you can read about all the things they take with them now that the project and their educations are coming to an end.

It won't be long now. In a few weeks, students from the National Film School of Denmark, the Norwegian Film School and Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH) will confront a reality that has been hovering over them since 2022.

Because at Göteborg Film Festival, NORD culminates when groups of students across the three institutions step up in front of an industry audience and pitch the projects they have developed together. And it might sound a bit ominous. Like a finale if you will. But it's not really. Because although the pitch round is a measurable and tangible preliminary result of the innovative process, the basis for the project's fundamental and lasting value must be found elsewhere.

New creative communities

Not many weeks ago, two teachers from the National Film School of Denmark and the Norwegian Film School met on a windy evening in the canteen at the Film School in Copenhagen. Here, they exchanged some of the perspectives and experiences that they considered particularly important for the program which each of them had led their students through.

And for both Josefine Kirkeskov and Lilja Ingolfsdottir, NORD had shown them the value of facilitating free and generous creative spaces. The fact that the students were able to get to know each other in a way that was not tied to a performance, allowing them to turn towards new creative communities, had been eye-opening.

For both teachers, the program has opened their eyes to the fact that you can unleash greater creativity when there is less at stake. And that open and free creative processes are an unconditional benefit for the finished product.

And that all sounds very good. But what does it look like from the students' perspective? Is the view of the pan-Nordic creative community just as positive? And how do they feel now that the project is coming to an end?

A common thread through the program

To answer these questions, we have teamed up with Yousra Said from SKH, Ingvild Dahlgren from the Norwegian Film School and Nawa Alani from the National Film School of Denmark. For all of them, NORD has been a thread, weaving in an out of their entire r education programs.

Because Yousra, Ingvild and Nawa have been involved in NORD from the start. And the start of NORD was also the start of their time at the film schools. So not only did they have to get to know their fellow students, they also had to travel across Nordic borders to meet new students from the other schools.

“It felt very much like the first day of school,” says Ingvild Dahlgren about the first NORD workshop, which took place in Copenhagen back in 2022.

“First and foremost, we had to meet as people, and then of course we talked about filmmaking. But it was from a general perspective about why we want to say something about the world.”

Obviously, the nature of the program changed during the subsequent workshops in both Stockholm and Norway. But the idea from the start was that the prerequisite for the collaboration was for the students to build trust and get to know each other in ways that were free from the pressures that simmer in the schools. Yousra Said agrees:

“I remember that we also had to do some kind of brainstorm in Norway with all kinds of pieces of paper, and it was clear that it had to be very playful. We were told that it wasn't intended to result in a finished product. And though it has somehow been looming over our heads that we would have to present something one day, we were told to do our best to resist that. We shouldn't think too far ahead.”

“What is going on here?"

And it was probably some slightly confused film school students who met at the various workshops back then. At the schools, everyday life is fast-paced. Students are involved in projects across subject lines and classes, and the environment is characterized by high ambitions within the projects, and people work seriously and purposefully.

This is also why week-long trips to other Nordic film schools were not always welcome. And it wasn't always easy to see where it would lead. As Yousra Said explains:

“Every time we saw each other, everyone asked 'are we going to pitch something?' and 'what is this going to be?' But we were always told to focus on the present, to focus on each other, and not to think about what it was going to be.”

Nawa Alani agrees:
“In the beginning, I think a lot of us thought: 'what is going on here?' There was a lot of confusion in the beginning where people didn't know what the concept was. And I think it really took a long time for my brain to understand it. 'Oh, we're just getting to know each other?' We shouldn't go into production mode, which is a completely different way of being in a room.”

“And I think that stands in contrast to all the other things we were involved with," adds Ingvild Dahlgren. “Because you come in from having been in a production where everything is hectic and it means a lot to you. And then you come in and a week has been set aside, but you don't quite know what to do with it. So I only realized how cool it was to just get to know each other after I finished school.”

A safety net on the other side

And it's striking that all three film school students are in complete agreement about the benefits of the program. Even though the pitch round at Göteborg Film Festival is exciting and all students look forward to it with hope and bated breath, the real result of the year-long program is to be found elsewhere.

Firstly, the students have managed to create spaces that are very different from the creative work communities that they enter at school. Ingvild's group consists of a screenwriter, a producer and six directors, which would never be possible in a school setting. And the group had its misgivings in the beginning:

“We started out just thinking, how can this not be a disaster? But we ended up developing something that we've become insanely happy with. And I've connected with six other directors in a way I haven't done before, because we have to create something together, so the result for me is really the space we've created where we meet regularly and talk about what we're facing. And when you're used to having the creative responsibility on your own, it feels like a different and very generous variation.”

Nawa Alani is a producer, and unsurprisingly, another aspect of the program shines through for her:
“For me, there's real value in entering an industry where you know other people from the Nordics. It might seeing things from a producer's perspective, but if we need to obtain financing - and we do - where we are dependent on Nordic funding, I know that I have some contacts I can call on. So it has created a safe network where you have friendly faces in different countries. And I think that's something we can really use on the other side of the school.”

Now the ending it's all that's left. Or at least a provisional ending. Because there is good reason to believe that NORD has made a lasting impression. For now, however, the students actually need to focus on the pitch and focus less on the present and the relationships. Can they do that?

“It has actually been difficult working on a concrete project because we've have been so busy developing relationships. But now, we are all caught up in projects and the pitch is getting closer. We suddenly only meet each other on Zoom,” says Yousra Said.

We'll have to wait a few weeks to see what the relationships have fostered when NORD takes the stage in Göteborg. We are looking can't wait.

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