Selections include Shameless and Home For Christmas.

The Nordic Film Days in Lübeck – the largest Scandinavian showcase outside the Nordic countries - will this year unspool a series of Swedish and Danish classics which attracted German audiences by the numbers, some of them for the wrong reasons.

”Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence (Stilheten) was a top-grosser among Scandinavian movies in Germany, mainly because people expected to see explicit sex scenes which weren’t really there,” explained artistic director Linde Fröhlich, of the Nordic Film Days.

At a press conference in Lübeck earlier today (Oct 7), Fröhlich went through the programme of the festival’s 52nd edition between Nov 3-7, including 140 films from the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, adding Northern Germany.

Compiled by retrospective chief Jörg Schöning, The Scandinavian seduction: Love – Welfare – Sex in the cinema from the 50s to the 70s will screen some of the films which ”had a lasting, liberating effect on modern European cinema, paving the way for the sexual revolution.”

Besides Swedish entries (Bergman, Arne Mattson, Vilgot Sjöman), the section comprises Danish director Knud Leif Thomsen’s Venom (Gift/1966) and Norwegian director Edith Carlmar’s The Wayward Girl (Ung flukt/1959) with Liv Ullmann, ”which is indeed very innocent.”

On the less serious side the festival will present a collection of Swedish sexploitation, which Super Klubb 8 has previously shown in London and New York, accompanied by Sweden’s then most famous centrefold and sex film star, Christina Lindberg (soon to be 60).

Two Nordic submissions for the Oscars – Finnish directors   Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen’s Steam of Life (Miesten vuoro/Finland), Icelandic director Fridrik Thór Fridriksson’s Mama Gógó (Iceland) – are scheduled for Lübeck’s CineStar multiplex, the centre of the event.

Fröhlich has also programmed two Norwegian features before their domestic premières: Peter Næss’ Shameless (Maskeblomstfamilien) and Bent Hamer’s Home for Christmas (Hjem til jul), the latter with fresh laurels from San Sebastian.

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