TEDDY BEAR (Denmark)  It is now pretty clear that Vikings made landfall in North America several centuries before Columbus collided with the West Indies. If they had colonized the land, we would all be blonds and speaking Norwegian. Such, my children, are the vagaries of history. Well a new invasion from the Scandinavian nation is about to commence at the Sundance Film Festival, where a strong sampling of films from Norway, Sweden and Denmark are literally making waves. De...

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a film by the Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, based on John le Carré’s bestseller of the same name, will open the 38th Ghent Film Festival on Tuesday 11 October. The spy film got an extremely enthusiastic reception at the recent Venice Film Festival. In the leading roles stars like Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, Ciarán Hinds and Toby Jones shine. British author John le Carré, born David John Moore Cornwell in 1931, is the gra...

  WOMEN WITHOUT MEN (Shirin Neshat, Iran)  At the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF), which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, bringing international cinema to the attention of local audiences is a major priority. Since most of the films presented will never find traditional theatrical distribution, their showings are FLIFF are (unfortunately) a rare occurrence and maybe the only opportunity for a film to be seen on the big screen. The lack of ...

The Retrospective of the 61st Berlin International Film Festival will honour Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, who died in 2007. The cinematic oeuvre of this legendary filmmaker includes more than 60 works. Films such as The Silence (Tystnaden, 1962/63), Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap, 1972/73) and Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander, 1981/82 – which took home four Oscars) brought him international fame. He won nearly all of the world’s most prestigious film awards, inc...