Nordic Film Days Lübeck 2017

JoRafCinema will attend the 2017 edition of the Nordic Film Days in Lübeck, Northern Germany. This will take place from November 1st to November 5th 2017 in the Hanseatic city of Lübeck open to the Baltic sea.

We had since 2014 a lot of fun in this festival and experienced many excellent movies and events. You can select in JoRafCinema all the movies seen in NFDL2016 by searching NFDL2016. The same method works for NFDL2014 and NFDL2015.
This year JoRafCinema intends to share even more with you this festival. The movies, the venues, the side events. And maybe this will give you some motivation to watch Scandinavian and Baltic movies or to pass by Lübeck for the Film festival.
We had listed this Festival at the end of our Article celebrating the four years of JoRafCinema. The program is released on 21.10.2017 and the presales opened on 28.10.2017. For the 100 years of Finnish independance, there are several highlights made in Finland. This year are presented: 
. 195 movies (including the short movies) from Denmark, Estonia, Färoer, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, 
. 6 sessions of full-dome movies, 
. one silent film, 
. two open-air session, 
. two video installations, in K70 and in Weltladen.

The City 
Lübeck is an old city trading with the cities around the Baltic sea and part of the north European trading cities grouped in the Hanse. The city center is beautiful with many dark courtyards and sinking churches. When the Sun is shining, the colours are great with the blue/red contrast. 

Views of Hansestadt Lübeck during the NFDL2017

Organisation and Venues 
Arriving in town, I looked for the Pressebüro where I could pick up the accrediation for JoRafCinema. This gives access to the Press office where it is possible to make interviews and have wifi. The accrediation covers all the movies with a limited number of seats per session. Therefore it is recommended to be early enough before the movies starts.

Press office and JoRafCinema badge

From there the main venue, CineStar Markthalle, is just two minutes by foot. The three other venues are Koki (for Kommunales Kino), Kolosseum and this year also Filmhaus. KoKi is a nice old movie theater organised by volunteers. Kolosseum is not really a movie theater but a theater or concert hall. Filmhaus is an arthouse movie theater.
Other venues are a dome for the fulldome movies shown in the half hemisphereabove our heads; St Katharinen church for special events such as the silent movie Finlandia; open air over the water at Krähenteich with two Finnish movies, Tale of a Lake and Lake Bodom. 

Fulldome with a small market with Finnish products

St Katarinen Kirche with the silent movie Finlandia

Krähenteich with an open air movie

Beyond movies there are this year exhibitions: in K70 Amalia Fontara presents her installation Sensation of place in which the public is invited to contemplate sceneries; in Weltladen Linná Kviske and Jana Sepehr present their installation Blei im Blut in which the lead recycling in Nigeria is presented in a special way. 
There is also one concert of the Finnish band Desert Planet. 

Concert of Desert Planet at Treibsand

Best movies 
I managed to watch 15 movies, one short movies session (Nordic Shorts Bizarre Episodes), one full dome session (Ghost Stories), both installations and the concert within the 5 days of the Nordic Film Days. 

I watched the following movies:

• Dröm vidare (Beyond dreams), 
• Amateurs in Space, 
• Ishavsblod (Sealers),  
• Kiehumispiste (Boiling point), 
• Raja 1918 (Die Grenze),
• 3 ting (3 things), 
• Exfrun (Ex-woman), 
• QEDA, 
• Liebe Oma, Guten Tag (What we leave behind), 
• Svanurinn (The swan), 
• Rum 213 (Room 213), 
• Undir trenu (Unter the tree), 
• Kett lopp (The end of the chain), 
• Kaiken se jestää (Star singers), 
• Miami,

Conclusion
There are a lot of movies in different categories and the choice is very difficult. Especially because the timing is not optimised for movie freaks. Between two movies, you always have one to two hours break, too much to just hang around in the entrance and two short to have a quiet lunch in the restaurants that are about 10-15 minutes by foot. There is little space to sit in the venues. Knowing that festival conditions, I was forced to discard some movies hoping they will be screened in normal programs and thus to focus on rare movies (documentaries, retrospectives). But I could not avoid to see some of the Scandinavian blockbusters, such as QEDA and 3 ting. The nordic movies are still very creative (Svanurinn, Exfrun) and documentaries are really well thought (Ishavsblod, Kiehumispiste). I would be happy to see more movies from the Baltic countries, as they had been very promising in the past and almost invisible this year at the NFDL!