Last week i asked our projectionist at Bio Reflexen what she’d be doing for her holidays. I suspected the answer. Heading off to Sodankylä on the Finnish Arctic Circle for the remarkable Midnight Sun Film Festival
During the past few weeks, I’ve been following the news from the Cannes Film Festival with great interest. Not of course that I am interested in scandalous, semi-naked starlets or Mr. Cruise’s tomfoolery and spectacular cunning stunts. It’s because , despite all the showbiz shenanigans, the festival has a very distinguished track record of bringing the world’s attention to some superb films.
This is a thread to talk about film festivals of all shapes and sizes. From the giants like Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Sundance and Toronto, to the multitude of smaller local festivals, which are probably a lot more fun.
Is there a festival that you go to regularly? Are there any festivals you would like to visit?
Have you made any exciting discoveries at festivals?
Back in the day, my pal @DuCo01 suggested that I tagged along to the Stockholm Film Festival screening at the Gino Nightclub of a new film by some geezer called Tarantino followed by a Q and A with the director. That’s how I got to see Pulp Fiction. Guess who asked the first question,
Several years before that, my then girlfriend was working at the NFT in London during the London Film Festival and got us tickets to see a movie called Assault on Precint 13. And young John Carpenter got a standing ovation when he took the stage to answer questions.
On the art house cinema circuit, an award like the Palme D’Or from Cannes will make an enormous difference to ticket sales in the same way that an Oscar nomination, or even better a win, is a serious game changer. For a young director or actor, a good review from a festival can make a big difference.
Of course, a few words of praise for a movie or a director on this thread could be a major turning point in their career.
This year’s Palme d’Or went to a film from Iran, IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT.
Not only will we screen it at Bio Reflexen. I’m sure it will attract a large audience.
This charming Iranian film was a big hit in Stockholm.
The Midnight Sun Film Festival was founded in 1986 by the Kaurismäki brothers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Sun_Film_Festival
Despite being small, non-competitive and difficult to get to, it has attracted some very impressive guests over the years…
the first international director guests were Samuel Fuller, Jonathan Demme, Bertrand Tavernier and Jean-Pierre Gorin. Later on it hosted some of the biggest names in cinema, such as Jim Jarmusch, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Roger Corman, Terry Gilliam, Francis Ford Coppola, Abbas Kiarostami and Miloš Forman.
https://media.msfilmfestival.fi/
This rather rambling article provides a good description..
https://montagesmagazine.com/2014/07/genuinely-socialist-the-midnight-sun-film-festival/
For this is a film festival like no other. We’ve bussed through miles of woodland from the last outpost of civilisation, known as Rovaniemi (which just happens to be the home of Santa, we are assured) and finally emerged here, in Sodankylä, where mosquitos will be our constant companions. It’s a strange little clearing in the endless boreal forest; it’s a small-town-turned-refugee-camp for hipsters; it’s ‘Midnight Sun!’
i can’t help but be a little curious.
On Friday evening i watched the extremely enjoyable Kiwi movie, Uproar.
Has anyone else seen it? Films from New Zealand often do not even get released here in Sweden which is a great shame.
A coming of age drama-comedy set in 1981, it features Julian Dennison who starred in The Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Minnie Driver, and Rhys Darby from Flight of the Conchords. The script is as witty.
I was reading about the film and discovered that the world premiere did not take place in New Zealand but in Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival. A canny move by the distributors who had their eyes on an international release, TIFF gets a lot of media attention.
I know little about that festival but what little I’ve read has impressed me a lot. It celebrates its 50th birthday this year.
To celebrate this they’ve chosen 50 films from the festival’s history to screen during 2025.
https://www.tiff.net/tiff50timeline
The festival is very large and very prestigious and organises screenings all year round.
The Stockholm Film Festival takes place in November but they also have activities all year round.
In early summer they have drive in screenings.
And in late august, just before school starts, they provide a whole week of movies in Rålambshovs Park. One big outdoor party which is completely free.
Can you get subscriptions for BFI or MUBI in Sweden? I’m sure you would love them.
Thanks for an interesting tip, @ Alias.
I believe I can subscribe to both. But do I have the time to do them justice??
BFI of course I knew about.
But MUBI was a newish and very interesting name for me. A very impressive art house profile. They do streaming, have a magazine and also are a distributor. And we’ve shown several of their movies at Reflexen. Definitely a name to look out for.
I just checked and discovered that they’ve been in Sweden since 2019. Their gimmick is that they only offer 30 films to choose from. One is replaced every day. I think that model would piss me off. Too stressful. But an interesting idea.
It’s worth signing up for their emails, because they do have occasionsl very cheap offers. I think my subscription was £60 for a year. Previously I have had 3 months for £1 a month.
Thanks for the tip, @Alias. I’ll get on that mailing list.
It’s tough for a small- distributor-
Mubi, whose capabilities are still rather limited, had to clash with a reality which CEO Efe Çakarel defines “an all-you-can-eat business model”, referring to the giant VoD distributors, Netflix and Amazon. A small reality like Mubi could not compete with such an intensive distribution, so it tried a model aimed not to the quantity of movies in the catalogue, but to their confirmed quality: Mubi offers a list of thirty movies at once (one replacement a day), divided in independent and classic works and films winning awards at most important film festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Toronto and Berlin. In doing so, Mubi closes unique and short-term distribution contracts which are different in every country due to the different distribution legislations. This strategy complies with Mubi’s cinephilic view, aimed to make a wider public access to a non-commercial cinema which is usually excluded from screenings in cinema because of that.
https://www.miamarket.it/en/new-distribution-strategies-for-mubi-the-vod-service-for-the-arthouse-cinema-2/