Nordic Lights Film Festival returns to SIFF
Nordic Heritage Musuem
Seattle
Photo: © First Pond Entertainment
The rapper SlinCraze is the subject and star of Arctic Superstar, one of the Norwegian films to be shown during January’s Nordic Lights Film Festival.
On Jan. 11, 2018, the Nordic Heritage Museum will open the ninth-annual Nordic Lights Film Festival (NLFF), hosted at the SIFF Film Center and the SIFF Cinema Uptown in Seattle. NLFF offers an immersion into the world of Nordic films, focusing on contemporary, award-winning films from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, and Sápmi. Filmmakers from the Nordic countries will attend the festival. The event runs Jan. 11 to 14.
The festival’s opening night will feature the Swedish film Borg vs. McEnroe. The film takes place in the summer of 1980, when Björn Borg (played by Icelandic actor Sverrir Gudnason) is the top tennis player in the world, dominating the sport both on and off the court. There is only one obstacle in his pursuit of a record-breaking fifth Wimbledon championship: the highly talented but ferociously abrasive young American, John McEnroe (Shia LaBeouf).
The complete festival lineup includes critically acclaimed feature-length comedies and dramas, as well as shorts and documentaries. Among this year’s films are The Square (Sweden), which was recently nominated for a 2018 Golden Globe; the Norwegian/Sámi documentary Arctic Superstar, about an indigenous Sámi rapper whose career dreams are stymied by his endangered language; Aki Kaurismäki’s latest hit The Other Side of Hope (Finland); and the ever-popular Nordic shorts program.
A full schedule and description of the films is available at nordicmuseum.org/nlff, and festival passes and tickets for opening night are available at SIFF.net.
his article originally appeared in the Dec. 29, 2017, issue of The Norwegian American. To subscribe, visit SUBSCRIBE or call us at (206) 784-4617.
