Iram Haq, still of What Will People Say (Hva vil folk si), 2017. Courtesy of TIFF.
A Home of One's Own
Nordic Women Filmmakers
Toronto, Ontario
Presented by
Toronto International Film Festival
TIFF is celebrating International Women's Day all month long with a spotlight on Nordic Women Filmmakers.
The past two decades has seen a wave of Nordic films that have captivated domestic and international audiences alike, all of them directed by women: Lone Scherfig (Italian for Beginners, An Education); Susanne Bier (In A Better World, Brothers, Birdbox); Lisa Langseth (Hotel, Pure), Ísold Uggadóttir (And Breathe Normally), and Zaida Bergroth (The Good Son, Tove).
This selection of 14 titles looks at key filmmakers who emerged around the turn of the century — Lone Scherfig (Denmark), Amanda Kernell (Sweden), and Iram Haq (Norway) — as well as veterans like Pirjo Honkasalo (Finland) and Mai Zetterling (Sweden). Many of these filmmakers premiered their films at the Festival. In addition, the series includes Svala Hannesdóttir’s Greed (1952), the first Icelandic narrative film directed by a woman, and The Man Who Was Allowed to Leave (1995), the fractured folktale by the Faroe Islands’ Katrin Ottarsdóttir, who has almost single-handedly established Faroese cinema.
Latter-day directors like Kernell and Haq have helped change the false perception of the region as homogenous by focusing on diverse, sometimes neglected communities. The characters, the protagonist women in particular, face unstable living conditions and threats to their independence.
