The Swedish film Svinalängorna (Beyond) is the best Nordic film in 2011 and therefore the film's director, Pernilla August, scriptwriters Pernilla August and Lolita Ray and producers, Helena Danielsson and Ralf Karlsson are awarded this year's Nordic Council Film Prize. This was announced by the Adjudication Committee's Honorary Chairperson, actress Helen Mirren, earlier today at a press conference in Copenhagen.

The Adjudication Committee, consisting of film experts from the five Nordic countries and Helen Mirren, give the following reason for their choice of this year's winner:

”Svinalängorna (Beyond) is a hard-hitting, complex drama - raw and delicate at the same time, dark yet filled with the light of life. Pernilla August and her team show a remarkable eye for detail and nuance, and a talent to make the difficult look easy. The acting is unique and - not to forget: 'Beyond' is very unusual as it is a personal and original interpretation of a literary bestseller."

Beyond, which had its premiere in Sweden in December last year fetched Pernilla August the critic award at the Film festival in Venice 2010 and since then there have been several awards at festivals worldwide. In Sweden the film won three coveted Guldbagge prizes and most recently the film was entered as Sweden's Oscar nomination in the category Best Foreign Language Film.

About the Prize

The Nordic Council Film Prize was awarded for the first time in 2002, was made permanent in 2005, and has since been awarded annually to a film of high artistic quality and with strong roots in Nordic culture. The film must also stand out through its artistic originality, and combine and refine the many elements of cinema in a convincing and integrated work.

The prize, worth DKK 350,000, is divided equally between the film's director, scriptwriter and producer, which underlines that film as an art form is the result of close co-operation between these three main functions.

The Nordic Council Film Prize is just one of several prizes awarded by the Nordic Council and is related to the prestigious Nordic Council Literature Prize, Music Prize and the Nature and Environment Prize. All the prizes will be presented to the award winners during the Nordic Council's Session in Copenhagen on 2 November.

About the Adjudication Committee:

The Adjudication Committee for the Nordic Council Film Prize consists this year of Honorary Member and Committee Chairperson Helen Mirren, Film Critic Per Juul Carlsen (Denmark), Communications Manager Outi Heiskanen (Finland), Director Sif Gunnarsdottir (Iceland), Editor Silje Riise Næss (Norway), Film Critic Fredrik Sahlin (Sweden) and Director Hanne Palmquist (Nordic Film & TV Fund).

Previous Prize Winners

The film prize, which is administered by the Nordic Film & TV Fund, has previously been awarded to Aki Kaurismäki for The Man without a Past (2002), Per Fly (2005) for Manslaughter, Josef Fares (2006) for Zozo, Peter Schønau Fog (2007) for The Art of Crying, Roy Andersson for YOU, The Living (2008), Lars von Trier for Antichrist (2009) and Thomas Vinterberg for Submarino (2010).

Further information on the Nordic Council film prize:

www.nordiskrådsfilmpris.com

www.nordiskfilmogtvfond.com

To the Editors

Download press photos of the winning film and new photos of the three prize winners from www.nordiskrådsfilmpris.com, which also has trailers, movie clips and photos, as well as descriptions of the other nominated films.

On the same site you will be able to see streaming from the announcement of this year's prizewinners with Adjudication Committee's Chairperson Helen Mirren and committee member Fredrik Sahlin.

Extra photos can be requested by contacting the photo Polfoto and Scanpix.

Trailers and clips from the winning film and the other nominated films can be downloaded in broadcast quality from:
Host: http://post.nordiskfilmogtvfond.com:8000/Login Username: ncfp_press2011 / Password: ncfp

For further information on the Nordic Council Film Prize 2011 please contact:
Freddy Neumann, Neumann PR & Communication, tel. +45 2046 7846 or neumann@mail.dk

Beyond

"One morning just before Christmas Leena (34) receives a telephone call from a hospital in the town where she grew up. She learns that her mother is dying. This piece of news leads the young woman on a journey to confront her mother for the first time in her adult life. Leena has fought hard to put her grief over her lost and bleak childhood behind her. Now she is forced to deal with the past in order to move forward."

Beyond is the award-winning Swedish actress Pernilla August’s directorial debut, based on the best-selling novel Beyond by Susanna Alakoski. The actress was approached by Drakfilm, which had acquired the rights to the book. She was immediately touched by the story and Leena's tough upbringing, "the problems of being poor, from another country and not able to speak the language".

Instead of telling the story of Leena's childhood from a linear perspective, August let it be from Leena's point of view as an adult. For August the film is about "lying to yourself and those people around you". "This is the story I wanted to tell, how you arrive at your decisions and how you can move forward in life despite the past," says the actress who has become a director. August had seen Noomi Rapace play Medea on stage, and gave her the part before she became famous with Millennium.

The film had its world première in Venice in 2010 where it won the audience award during the Critics' Week and the UNESCO Ambassador of Hope Award. In addition, it won several other prestigious prizes such as, for example, the NDR Award for best film in Lübeck and three Guldbagge prizes for best director, best supporting actress (Finnish-born Outi Mäenpää) and best editor (Åsa Mossberg).

The film has sold about 650,000 tickets in Scandinavia (almost 400,000 in Sweden) and is one of Nordic Film's new inter-Scandinavian blockbusters after the Millennium Triology.

Director/scriptwriter - Pernilla August

Pernilla August was born in Stockholm in 1958 and is one of Sweden's most internationally acclaimed actresses. She had an extensive collaboration with the Swedish master director Ingmar Bergman, who first gave her a role in his Oscar-winning Fanny and Alexander (1982). In Cannes in 1992, she won the award for Best Actress for her role in Bille August's Best Intentions, with screenplay by Bergman. She also collaborated with the legendary Swedish director in the television (In the Presence of a Clown) and at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm (A Doll's House, Winter's Tales, Mary Stuart and Ghosts).

August got her Hollywood breakthrough in the role as Anakin Skywalker's mother in George Lucas’ Star Wars Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace (1999) and in Star Wars Episode 2 –  Attack of the Clones (2002). The many Scandinavian directors she has had an inspired collaboration with include, Per Fly (Manslaugher), Kristian Petri (Details) and Bjørn Runge (Om jag vänder mig om, Mun mot mun). In 2009 she starred in the award-winning director debuts by Jörgen Bergmark (Det enda rationella) and Håkon Liu (Miss Kicki). The upcoming major Swedish films where we will see her, include Dom över död man by Jan Troell and Call Girl by Mikael Marcimain.
Beyond is August's first feature film as writer / director.

Scriptwriter - Lolita Ray

Lolita Ray was born in Stockholm 21 February 1957 as the daughter of Indian father and Swedish mother. She made her debut as a screenwriter with Pernilla August's directorial debut Beyond, based on Susanna Alakoskis best-selling novel. She is a singer/songwriter in the band Britta Karen and also performs as a solo artist with her own songs.

Producer - Helena Danielsson

Helena Danielsson was born in 1966, studied German language and literature in Austria and graduated in psychology and media/communications at the University of Lund in Sweden. She set up her production company Hepp Film in 2003, after a fifteen-year long career in the Scandinavian and European film industry. Hepp Film's core activity is to develop and produce feature films, television dramas and documentaries in collaboration with award-winning European talent. Among recent examples include tDet enda rationella by Jörgen Mark Berg, who won an Arte France Cinema Award/CineMart (2007), and documentary Smiling in a War zone, which was nominated for an Emmy in 2007.
Her most ambitious upcoming projects is a new movie - as yet untitled - about the Swedish boxer Bo Högberg and cabaret singer Anita Lindblom starring Ola Rapace and Noomi Rapace in the leading roles. Hollywood director Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Thirteen) is associated with this English-language project.

Producer – Ralf Karlsson

Ralf Karlsson was born in Stockholm in 1953. He finished his studies at the Dramatic Institute in Stockholm in 1980. The following year he began working as a film producer for Drakfilm, a company that was established in 1974 and where he is director. Drakfilm has produced a total of 16 feature films, seven major television series, more than 1,000 commercials, corporate films, training films, music videos and documentaries. The titles include Ärliga blå ögon (1977), Sinkadus (1980) and the feature film Mannen från Mallorca by Bo Widerberg (1984).