Thomas Vinterberg‘s “Families Like Ours,” “Pressure Point” from the writer of “Black Crab” and Erik Poppe’s “Quisling” count among nominations for a high-powered Göteborg Nordic Series Script Award, the biggest plaudit for TV screenwriting in Scandinavia.
Replacing the Göteborg Festival’s Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize, the Script Award nominations also take in feminist porn comedy “Money Shot,” a Canneseries winner, and “The School of Housewives,” co-written and directed by Iceland’s Arnór Pálmi Arnarson, who helmed “The Minister,” starring Ólafur Darri Ólafsson.
With regard to artistic ambition, ranging broadly in style from “Families’” near-future survival drama-thriller to “Pressure Point’s” nervy and compelling true-events recreation and “Quisling’s” boldly-told period drama, these three series explore modern-times horror.
“Families” charts an apocalypse that tears Denmark’s upper middle class apart across Europe and plunges them into a merciless and sometimes violent new world; “Pressure Point” plumbs neo-Nazism, “Quisling” nails the mindset of a delusional autocrat.
Far rosier, “Money Shot” and “School” also tap a modern Zeitgeist, showing women taking larger control of their lives, thanks in part to female solidarity.
In industry terms, the five series mark recent offerings from many of Europe’s powerhouse producers, broadcasters and distributors, led by Vinterberg’s “Families Like Ours,” produced by heavyweights Zentropa Enterprises, Studiocanal, Canal+ and TV 2 Danmark.
The Nordic Series Script Award nominees still compete for a substantial cash award of €17,000 ($17,700), financed by the Nordisk Film & TV Fond, which prizes the main writer(s) of a Nordic drama series.
In one change, candidates must have premiered their series in the previous year: the former prize also served to anticipate some of the big upcoming hits from Scandinavia.
In a further new development, The Nordic Series Awards will include an honorable mention, the Creative Courage Award, which celebrates the producer and commissioner of a series that boldly pushes creative boundaries and embraces innovation. Candidates are submitted by streamers and broadcasters.
Nordic Series Awards winners will be announced at a ceremony on the evening of Jan. 28 at Göteborg’s TV Drama Vision.
“The writer award’s new name has more weight in international C.V.’s, as it clearly defines that the prize goes to the best Nordic series script. Another welcome reform is that all series that premiered in 2024 are eligible.
In these economically tough times, commissioning risks playing safe. With the Creative Courage Award, we want to shed light on a commissioner-producer collaboration that has resulted in an exceptionally brave and innovative series. I’m now happy to see that we have great candidates in many genres in both categories,” said Liselott Forsman, CEO at Nordisk Film & TV Fond.
“The selection demonstrates the diversity of stories emerging from the region and signals both the strength of the present and a promising future for Nordic drama series,” added Cia Edström, head of Göteborg’s TV Drama Vision.
The jury for the Nordic Series Script Award takes in Norwegian actor-screenwriter Henriette Steenstrup; Joanna Szymańska, producer-CEO at ShipsBoy, Poland and Linus Fremin, a TV Critic and creative director at Sweden’s Make Your Mark.
Thomas Vinterberg, Bo hr. Hansen, Anna Bache-Wiig, Siv Rajendram Eliassen, Jóhanna Fridrika Sæmundsdóttir, Arnór Pálmi Arnarson, Pelle Rådström and Jemina Jokisalo.
Liisa Nurmela
TV Drama Vision runs Jan. 28-29, the 48th Göteborg Film Festival from Jan. 24 through Feb. 2. Nordic Series Script Award nominations in more detail:
“Families Like Ours,” (“Familier som vores”)
Nominated writers: Thomas Vinterberg, Bo hr. Hansen
Denmark, 7×50′
Broadcaster: TV2 Denmark
Produced by: Zentropa Entertainments
Producers: Sisse Graum Jørgensen and Kasper Dissing
Directed by: Thomas Vinterberg
Sales: World: Studiocanal, except Benelux, which is handled by TrustNordisk
Premiere: Oct. 20, 2024
The first series from Vinterberg, a 2021 Oscar winner (“Another Round”) and 1998 Dogma 95 co-founder (“The Celebration”), the high-end, seven-part “Families” weighs in with a plausible impossibility: as Denmark begins to sink below the sea, its government orders its total evacuation. As it broadens its compass to France, Romania, Poland, the U.K. and finally Finland, it holds its focus on Vinterberg verities – family, love – but also emerges as an upper middle class horror story where professional preeminence means nothing and the well-healed extended family at its core falls foul to once improbable possibilities: Human trafficking, brutal vigilante gangs and even murder.
“Money Shot,” (“Toinen tuleminen”)
Finland, 8×25′
Nominated writer: Jemina Jokisalo
Broadcaster: Elisa Viihde
Produced by: Just Republic
Producers: Jemina Jokisalo, Samuli Norhomaa and Johanna Tarvainen
Directed by: Teemu Niukkanen
Sales: Federation Studios and Nordisk Film
Premiere: May 2, 2024
Easily the most irreverent of the five entries and a short form series Student Award winner at 2024’s Canneseries: Sari, an over-the-hill porn actress, or so she’s told, desperate to find work, teams with a film school reject to produce erotic films with and for a female gaze. “It’s quite bold and different, especially for a Finnish show, and I’m really happy [broadcaster] Elisa Viihde had the courage to commission it. I always pursue stories I absolutely love, with characters we can feel for,” Jokisalo (“Savela,” “Makkari”) has told Variety. “It’s super colorful. It’s definitely not another Nordic Noir!”
Money Shot
Courtesy of Göteborg Film Festival
“Pressure Point,” (“Smärtpunkten”Sweden, 3×60’
Nominated writer: Pelle Rådström
Storyline: Wilhelm Behrman and Niklas Rockström
Broadcaster: SVT
Produced by: Kärnfilm and Art & Bob
Producer: Martina Stöhr
Directed by: Sanna Lenken
Sales: ReInvent International Sales
Premiere: Apr. 19, 2024
A dense, tense, true-event recreation of rehearsals for the play, “7:3,” created by renowned playwright Lars Norén and producer Isa Stenberg, in which two neo-Nazi inmates expound on stage their real-life neo-Nazi convictions and suggest what lead to them: Alienation, childhood hurt. For Norén, this was an opportunity for a “unique story,” for Stenberg and some prison authorities a chance for rehabilitation, for one of the prisoners, the opportunity to plan a bank robbery, which shook Swedish society to the core. Written by Rådström (“Black Crab”) from an outline by Berhman (“Caliphate,” “Before We Die”) and Rockström (“Caliphate,” “Wallander”).
Pressure Point
Credit: Niklas Maupoix / SVT
Quisling
Norway, 5×45-50′
Nominated writers: Anna Bache-Wiig and Siv Rajendram Eliassen
Broadcaster: TV2 Norway
Produced by: Paradox Rettigheter AS
Producers: Finn Gjerdrum and Stein B. Kvae
Directed by: Erik Poppe
Sales: REInvent
Seen at Haugesund and Toronto as a 147-minute feature, “Quisling: The Final Days” now competes for the Nordic Series Script Award as a weighty five-episode series version which, according to director Poppe, tells “an entirely different story,” with much more about Maria Quisling and priest Peder Olsen’s wife. Yet the series’ core virtue looks to be the same as the feature: “a penetrating psychological study of a delusional authoritarian,” as Variety said in its review, here Vidkund Quisling, Hitler’s puppet Norwegian president. Some of that must come from the series screenwriters, Anna Bach-Wiig and Siv Rajendram Eliassen, who worked with Poppe on “Utøya, Jul. 22” and “The Emigrants,”
Quisling
“The School of Housewives,” (Húsó)
Iceland, 6×30′
Nominated writers: Arnór Pálmi Arnarson, Jóhanna Fridrika Sæmundsdóttir
Broadcaster: RÚV
Produced by: Glassriver
Producer: Arnbjörg Hafliðadóttir
Directed by: Arnór Pálmi Arnarson
Premiere: Jan. 1, 2024
A rehab regular since a teen, Helka is sent to a School of Housewives as her very last chance for a court to grant her custody of her infant daughter, now in foster care. Her heart’s in the right place, which wins her unlikely allies. But one thing’s learning to weave, crochet or cook pineapple haddock and another’s for Helka to face up to her addictions and inner demons. A feel-good dramedy – and finally tearjerker – yoking the talents as writers of Arnór Palmi Arnarson, also director of “The Minister,” starring Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, multi-prized actor-scribe Jóhanna Fridrika Sæmundsdóttir (“Sisterhood,” “Agnes Joy”), and Icelandic production powerhouse Glassriver (“Black Sands,” “As Long As We Live”).
The School of Housewives
Courtesy of Göteborg Film Festival