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| Ibelin Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute |
Held every January since 1991, Tromsø International Film Festival typically overlaps with Sundance, but it feels like a much less corporate affair with an informal, homely, village-like atmosphere. Even so, TIFF packs a big punch regionally and beyond. Boasting about 60,000 cinema admissions across seven days, it now rivals Bergen for the title of Norway's biggest film fest. It also has its own distinctly northern character with its remote Arctic setting, majestic mountain backdrop and outdoor screenings in the sub-zero “winter cinema”. The only film festival to offer whale-watching, ice swimming and husky safaris as optional extras, Tromsø delivers a unique Fjord fiesta of fine films and sparkly snowscapes.
An uneasy mix of joy, anger and sadness, the festival's opening film was Life Is Beautiful, a local story lent an extra edge of timely, tragic resonance by current global events. This decade-spanning documentary chronicles the precarious journey of Mohamed Jalaby, a Palestinian film director who ends up stranded in Norway during an exchange trip when the border crossing to his native Gaza is closed, initially indefinitely, during heightened tensions with Israel. Adding extra poignancy, the film includes recent footage of everyday life inside Gaza before the current devastating conflict erupted. Jalaby is now a Tromsø resident, and his screening was a packed, highly emotional affair featuring local dignitaries, musical performances and speeches about the ongoing war.
Alongside an international selection of recently feted festival favourites and awards season contenders including Alexander Payne's' The Holdovers, Lina Soualem's Bye Bye Tiberias, Molly Manning Walker's How To Have Sex, Christian Petzold's Afire and Ilker Çatak's The Teachers' Lounge, the Tromsø program also featured a smorgasbord of Nordic filmmaking talent. Norwegian cinema has always been modest in production numbers, but punches above its weight in terms of festivals and awards thanks to critically acclaimed directors like Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt and Bent Hamer.
Even if the Tromsø program was light on locally made features, there were still some striking, original works including Ibelin, Benjamin Ree's moving documentary about Mats Steen, a computer gamer whose rich online social life was only revealed to his family following his death from muscular dystrophy in 2014. Featuring extensive animated sequences modelled on the hugely popular role-playing fantasy game World of Warcraft, Ibelin screened in Tromsø mere hours after its Sundance world premiere. Local screen talent was also indirectly honoured by the regional premiere of Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli's English-language debut Dream Scenario, a deliciously dark Nicolas Cage tragicomedy with strong Charlie Kaufman overtones.
A distinctive element of the Tromsø festival brand is Films From The North, a broad catchment area covering all of Scandinavia, Iceland, Russia, Greenland, Canada and Alaska. Among the highlights of this section was Maria Fredriksson’s The Gullspång Miracle, a stranger-than-fiction documentary about two Norwegian sisters thrown into confusion by a chance meeting with a woman who may or may not be the long-lost older sister they believed to be dead. This mischievous inquisition into secrets and lies, both on screen and off, has already screened at international festivals and deserves to find a wider audience after Tromsø.
Another noteworthy inclusion in Films From the North was Icelandic director Gaukur Úlfarsson's Soviet Barbara, The Story Of Ragnar Kjartansson in Moscow. This quirky documentary chronicles an ambitiously grand art project taking place in the shadow of the Kremlin, shortly before the invasion of Ukraine, which falls apart messily when Russian tanks cross the border. The film also features a fraught cameo by Maria "Masha" Alyokhina of Pussy Riot, whose real-life struggles against Putin's thuggish regime become a wake-up call for the Icelandic artist at the heart of the film, shaking him out of his default mode of playful irony into more direct political solidarity. Another powerful film from this section was Swedish writer-director Isabella Eklöf's Kalak, a harrowing study in childhood sexual abuse and its lingering psychic aftershocks, set against the stunning snowscapes of Greenland.
More specific local issues were also part of the Tromsø line-up this year as the festival built on its growing commitment to showcasing Sámi cinema, films made by and about the indigenous people whose historical homeland spans the far northern regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Strong premieres included Sara Margrethe Oskal's The Tundra Within Me, a stirring Sámi-themed culture-clash love story which opens in Norwegian cinemas next month, Finnish director Katja Gauriloff's ravishingly beautiful monochrome flashback drama Je'Vida, the first film ever made in the endangered Skolt Sámi language, and Homecoming from directors Suvi West and Anssi Kömi, a fascinating documentary about ongoing battles to reclaim and repatriate sacred Sámi objects currently held in museums. As Tromsø is Norway's biggest Sámi city, and festival director Lisa Hoen has Sámi heritage herself, this is the perfect platform for small stories addressing big themes like cultural representation, enforced cultural assimilation and post-colonial reconciliation.
Unlike some bigger European festivals, Tromsø is not typically a glitzy celebrity event, but the organisers scored a coup this year with a joint guest appearance by Ethan Coen and his long-time partner-collaborator Tricia Cooke. The program featured a juicy retrospective of the duo's work, from Coen brothers classics like Barton Fink, Fargo and The Hudsucker Proxy to Ethan's solo directing debut, the music documentary Jerry Lee Lewis Trouble In Mind. As he explained during a masterclass interview, Ethan recently bowed out of working with brother Joel for purely practical reasons. After a run of stressful productions he simply felt “too old” and “too lazy” to continue, though he did not deny reports that the brothers currently have more joint projects in the pipeline.
Whether he is working with brother Joel or with Cooke, Ethan explained during his masterclass, the lines between writer, director and editor are always blurred. “The titles are all totally artificial,” he told the Tromsø audience “When you're writing the movie, you're making decisions that are kind of visual and kind of editorial. And you always sort out those titles after the fact. That has nothing to do with how you actually made the movie.”
Coen and Cooke spoke about their upcoming debut feature as a writer-director duo on Drive-Away Dolls, a lesbian road movie co-starring Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Pedro Pascal and Matt Damon, which launches worldwide in cinemas next month. Billed as the first in a “queer trilogy” of knowingly pulpy B-movies, it was originally titled Drive-Away Dykes, and seems to borrow some of its deadpan indie feel from early Coen brothers films, only with an extra campy twist. “Where the Coens go highbrow, we go low,” Cooke quipped in Tromsø. Ethan also praised the “very dry” Nordic humour, drawing parallels with his own darkly funny brand of comedy, forged while growing up among Scandinavian immigrants in the icy Fargo snowscapes of Minnesota. Huddled under the distant glow of the Northern Lights, the Arctic audience signalled their approval with wry smiles and muted laughter.
