It has only been a week since Jonas Poher Rasmussen's animated documentary 'Flee' won the main prize for best international documentary at Sundance. Now, the film adds another prestigious award to its name, taking home the prize for best Nordic documentary at Göteborg Film Festival.
'Flee' offers a gripping account of how the director's close friend Amin arrived in Denmark as a young refugee from Afghanistan 25 years ago. The film was widely praised by international critics from outlets such as The Guardian, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. In his A-review, Eric Kohn from IndieWire wrote: "There have been countless movies about the immigration crisis, but none of them have the sheer ingenuity of 'Flee'".
'Flee' has been bought for American distribution by Neon, the indie company behind the Oscar winning 'Parasite'. British actor Riz Ahmed and his Danish colleague Nikolaj Coster-Waldau are set to voice the lead roles as Amin and Jonas Poher Rasmussen, respectively, in an English-language version of the film set to debut later this year.
'Another Round' by Thomas Vinterberg was also among the winners at this year's festival. The film, about four weary high school teachers testing a theory that a constant level of modest inebriation opens our minds to the world, was awarded the audience award in the Nordic feature category. Thus continuing its impressive international winning streak, which includes a Golden Globe nomination and four European Film Awards.
The festival's main prize for best Nordic feature went to Ronnie Sandahl's Swedish-Danish co-production 'Tigers', based on a true story about the modern soccer industry. The movie is co-produced by Birgitte Skov for SF Studios Denmark. Furthermore, Maja Jul Larsen, the screenwriter behind the Danish TV series 'Cry Wolf', won the Nordic TV Drama Screenplay Award.
Denmark was also represented at the festival by the comedy drama 'Persona Non Grata', the debut feature by Lisa Jespersen.
Göteborg Film Festival is held annually in the Swedish city of the same name and is regarded as one of the most important film festivals in Northern Europe. Previous Danish winners include 'Queen of Hearts', 'Distant Barking of Dogs', 'The Charmer', 'In Your Arms', 'The Look of Silence' and 'Bridgend'.
