Unlock the Full SEA-Nordic Festival Experience
Purchase a Festival Pass and immerse yourself in three days of critically acclaimed Nordic cinema!
Passholders enjoy exclusive access to all festival screenings at Majestic Bay Theatres, ensuring you've got a seat for every moment of movie magic. With your Festival Pass, you’ll also gain access to chats with the curator, as well as quick and easy entry. It's more than just a ticket—it's your passport to the best of Nordic cinema!
Members Festival Pass: $90
Non-Members Festival Pass: $100
Can’t make it to the full festival? Check out individual films below and select your preferred screenings.
Members Individual Ticket: $13
Non-Members Individual Ticket: $16
Festival Schedule
Friday, September 13
- 7:00 pm - Sister, What Grows Where Land Is Sick?
Saturday, September 14
- 10:00 am - "Daddy Issues" (Shorts Program)
- 12:30 pm - The Gullspång Miracle
- 2:45 pm - Paradise Is Burning
- 5:00 pm - Twice Colonized
- 7:30 pm - Godland
Sunday, September 15
- 10:00 am - "Just A Home" (Shorts Program)
- 11:30 am - Strategies of Resistance
- 1:30 pm - Polaris
- 3:15 pm - Good Life
- 5:00 pm - The Group Crit
- 7:30 pm - Flowers
Sister, What Grows Where Land is Sick?
Norway | 2022 | dir. Franciska Seifert Eliassen
Sep 13 @ 7:00 pm
Following the screening, enjoy a 30-minute
prerecorded conversation with the film's director
and SEA-Nordic Guest Curator Silja Espolin Johnson.
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Feature | 80 min
In a small town in Northern Norway, Eira tries to navigate in the shadows of her brilliant and rebellious older sister Vera. Lately, something is happening to Vera, and in a quest to find out what, Eira starts reading her diary. She enters Vera’s universe of intense light, glitter, mythology, and hopes for a more beautiful world. The award-winning debut feature by then 25 year old filmmaker and climate activist Franciska Eliassen who lived in a self-made earth dwelling for a year in preparation for the shoot, unites magical realism and coming-of-age themes to explore sisterhood, mental illness and how the climate crisis effects the younger generation.
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"Daddy Issues" includes three recent and unique projects that re-examine childhood experiences and family relations in heartbreaking, humoristic and insightful ways.
- Project Dad | Camilla Jämting | Sweden | 2024 | 28 min | Camilla's father is a pick-up artist who teaches other men how to succeed on Tinder. Camilla is an artist and a feminist, and the two do not agree on much. Can they manage to maintain a strong bond?
- Daddy’s Shoes | Amir Asgharnejad | Norway |2024 | 22 min | The film centers on siblings Amir and Anahita's relationship with their father, who passed away a few years ago. Seated in Amir’s exhibition also called Daddy’s Shoes, in a gallery turned into something resembling a TV-studio, the siblings discuss their father's character and why he became the way he did in the aftermath of fleeing from Iran to Norway in the early 1990s. Their dialogue gradually shifts into the absurd as Amir and Anahita get into an argument that reenacts a fight between their parents that they witnessed as children.
The following three films are part of a larger project in which artist, filmmaker and author Lene Berg explores the life and destiny of her father, director and writer Arnljot Berg (1931-1982), and their relationship:
- The Day Rises | Lene Berg | Norway| 2022 | 8 min | The Day Rises is a reconstruction of Lene Berg’s memory of her father’s arrest in Paris in the mid-1970s, shot in a model. The voice-over follows the process of memorizing: while her memories are detailed and concrete, as seen in a movie, how can they be remembered if she wasn’t present when it happened?
- Prison Letters | Lene Berg | Norway | 2022 | 19 min | Prison Letters is based on the correspondence between Arnljot Berg and his two youngest children while he was imprisoned in the notorious La Santé prison in Paris in 1975-1976, accused of having killed his third wife, Evelyne Zammit Berg, Lene Berg's stepmother. The film is composed of a selection of the original letters combined with newspaper clippings and children’s drawings.
- Casting Arnljot | Lene Berg | Norway | 2023 | 10 min | Four professional male actors discuss and interpret the character of Arnljot Berg, director Lene Berg’s late father, during a casting-session, based on a few texts and a monologue she has written. As they each interpret Berg's text, they deliver the same lines in their own varying style and thus attempt to give a voice and a body to a man who is long dead. The variations in their interpretations delivered to a casting agent gives us both comical and painful glimpses into a complicated man and his relationship with his daughter.
The Gullspång Miracle
Sweden | 2023 | dir. Maria Fredriksson
Sep 14 @ 12:30 pm
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Documentary | 109 min
Two pious sisters buy an apartment after having witnessed a divine sign - only to realize that the seller of the apartment looks identical to their other sister, who committed suicide some thirty years before. A series of equally strange coincidences follows, along with revelations about all their pasts—so many that they decided to ask Fredriksson if she would make a film chronicling all of it.
Paradise is Burning
Sweden/Denmark/Finland | 2023 | dir. Mika Gustafson
Sep 14 @ 2:45 pm
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Feature | 108 min
In a working-class area of Sweden, sisters Laura (16), Mira (12), and Steffi (7), get by on their own, left to their own devices by an absent mother. With summer on the way and no parents around, life is wild and carefree, vivacious, and anarchic. But when social services call a meeting, Laura must find someone to impersonate their mom, or the girls will be taken into foster care and separated. Laura keeps the threat a secret, so as not to worry her younger sisters. But as the moment of truth draws closer, new tensions arise, forcing the three sisters to negotiate the fine line between the euphoria of total freedom and the harsh realities of growing up.
Twice Colonized
Greenland/Denmark/Canada | 2023 | dir. Lin Alluna
Sep 14 @ 5:00 pm
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Documentary | 91 min
Renowned Inuit lawyer Aaju Peter has led a lifelong fight for the rights of her people. But while launching an effort to establish an Indigenous forum at the European Union, Aaju finds herself facing a difficult, personal journey to mend her own wounds after the unexpected passing of her son. In this “powerful exploration of cultural trauma” (The Film Stage), director Lin Alluna follows alongside Aaju Peter as she strives to reclaim her language and identity after a lifetime of whitewashing and forced assimilation.
Godland
Denmark/Iceland | 2022 | dir. Hlynur Pálmason
Sep 14 @ 7:30 pm
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Feature | 142 min
In the late nineteenth century, Danish priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) makes the perilous trek to Iceland’s southeastern coast with the intention of establishing a church. There, the arrogant man of God finds his resolve tested as he confronts the harsh terrain, temptations of the flesh, and the reality of being an intruder in an unforgiving land. What unfolds is a transfixing journey into the heart of colonial darkness attuned to both the majesty and terrifying power of the natural world.
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"Just a Home" looks at different vulnerabilities surrounding the concept of “home”, related to: corporate housing policies and exploitation of natural resources, Norway’s disputed self-image as a global piece-making agent as well as the existential threat in living under big rocks.
- Just a Stone | dir. Eli Mai Huang Nesse | Norway | 2023 | 13 min | How does one cope with the possibility that everything can suddenly collapse? In the film Just a Stone, we hear accounts of accidents and trivial near-accidents from people who grew up in areas prone to rockslides, and about their unique relationship with stone.
- The Power Grid | dir. Clara Bodén | Sweden | 2023 | 4 min | There is a boy standing by a power plant in inland Norrland, near rapids that no longer exists because someone owns the water rights. The Grid is a personal film about growing up surrounded by rich natural resources, about power production, and the feeling that has developed from re-examining and questioning what surrounds us.
- A Home on Every Floor | dir. Signe Rosenlund-Hauglid | Norway | 2023 | 11 min | A film inspired by a poem by artist and social commentator Hanna Asefaw. A visual coming-of-age story from a council flat in Grünerløkka, Oslo in the late '90s that depicts memories, nostalgia, and reflections on a childhood, with Hanna's voice as the cornerstone. A unique insight into human tragedy and warmth – across cultures and class.
- There Comes a Day | dir. Dalia Al Kury | Norway/Jordan | 2022 | 4 min | I can't seem to succeed teaching my kids Arabic, but I think I have succeeded them in teaching them some good old dark Arab humor. This film was inspired by my kids curiosity about my job as a filmmaker. It's based on an ongoing ´joke´ and a fantasy of mine as a frustrated Arab mom living in Norway. The film mixes home videos and some fictional footage and is shot with an iPhone on a lucky day trip while visiting our second home in Jordan.
- Oslo Syndrome | dir. Ayman Alazraq | Norway/Palestine | 2013 | 6 min | The year 2013 brought the Oslo Agreement to the spotlight all over again. It brought me back to 20 years, to when I had a dream now lost. This dream haunts me again. I feel as if I’m sitting in a train station watching trains and people come and go. They all have a destination to reach as I wait for a train that might never arrive. Produced as part of the series Suspended Time, short films and video clips on the Oslo Agreement from the Palestinian perspective.
- LOOK! | dir. Magnus Lysbakken | 2023 | Norway | 27 min | LOOK! is a testament to the magic of childhood and the art of storytelling. We follow a group of eight-year-olds through the winter. The moods and rhythms of their lives. A film about snow outside the window, tractors in convoys, children learning and breathing.
Strategies of Resistance
Norway | 2021 | dir. Thomas Østbye
Sep 15 @ 11:30 am
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Norwegian artist, activist, and filmmaker Thomas Østbye's project Strategies of Resistance is a cinematic study of the climate struggle from two opposing sides of the law.
The Play of Everyman | Documentary | 2021 | 31 min.
The film The Play of Everyman (2021, 31 min) depicts Norway's first climate trial by placing the audience in the midst of the court proceedings. Is the record-high trust that Norwegians have in their authorities justified as the existential threats of climate change and ecological breakdown escalate?
Civil Disobedience | Documentary | 39 min.
The upcoming film Civil Disobedience (39 min, shown as a work-in-progress) follows climate activists from Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil during the blockade of Norway's largest fuel port for aviation. The film takes us on an intimate journey behind the scenes of civil disobedience, the emotional challenges, and the struggle to break through the wall of mainstream media. During the filming, the police deployed their counter-terrorism unit Delta, banned the media, and arrested the filmmaker.
Polaris
Greenland/Denmark/Spain | 2022 | dir. Ainara Vera
Sep 15 @ 1:30 pm
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Documentary | 79 min
Hayat, an expert sailor in the Arctic, navigates far from humans and her family’s past in France. But when her little sister Leila gives birth to a baby girl Inaya, their worlds are turned upside down; we witness their journey, guided by the polar star, to overcome the family’s fate. A deeply moving and overlapping portrait of two sisters who could not be more different, Polaris takes a resolutely political stance on the status of women in the world of sailing. A veritable voyage, both physically and emotionally.
Good Life
Sweden | dir. Marta Dauliūtė & Viktorija Šiaulytė
Sep 15 @ 3:15 pm
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Documentary | 72 min
While home office became an everyday option, Good Life is a gentle and critical look at a co-living startup, where the vision for 24/7 integration of work, networking, self-management and private life is being tested with even higher, limitless and global ambition. Guided by observations and questioning of the two female directors, the new world of innovation, insecure jobs, efficiency, flexibility and personal adaptation is put under test. What happens when corporate storytelling becomes part of one’s innermost self and community becomes a commodity?
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Hybrid | 72 min
A social experiment runs amok at an art school in Norway, where students participate in a role-playing game that humorously and satirically tackles the political trends in contemporary art—quite literally.
Contemporary art has become an arena for political clashes, and this is nowhere more evident than at art academies. Norwegian artist Sille Storihle has designed a role-playing game to explore these issues. The rules are clear: students at the Film Art School in Kabelvåg are given fictional characters, which they develop further and embody in group critiques of each other’s works. But even though the rules are clear, the game itself can easily get out of hand! And it does in The Group Crit, where the students (all in character) do not hold back from criticizing each other’s artworks—and each other in general—soon blurring the performative frame of the heated debate. This collective experiment challenges not only the students’ self-perception but also Storihle’s own authority as the director. An important, witty, and wild work created with the active participation of the students.
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Feature | 65 min
Emma meets a gang of high schoolers at a forest rave. Roaming from one party to another, she becomes part of the group in their search for new highs and their place in the world. Blomster is an associative, hallucinatory, and fun film where we get to be part of their community, if only for one night.
