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Exclusive: The Audiovisual Producers Finland (Apfi) today announced the slate of new series its members are bringing to Berlin (scroll down for the full list) alongside a new industry event titled Focus on Finland to be held during the festival.

Focus on Finland will be an official part of the Berlinale Series Market schedule and will feature an industry panel titled ‘Why So Series?’ which will focus on Nordic scripted comedy and drama series.

The panel will take place at CinemaxX Theatre on Potsdamer Platz on February 20 and will feature writer Brendan Foley (The Man Who Died), producer Jackie Larkin (Strike), commissioner Arttu Nurmi (Modern Men), and distribution executive Jean-Michel Ciszewski (Bnei Aruba). The panel will be moderated by Marike Muselaers, Chief Content & Partnerships Officer, Lumiere Group.

“This year we’re focusing on expanding the industry and audience perceptions of what makes Nordic Noir,” said Laura Kuulasmaa, Executive Director of Apfi.

Hanne Palmquist talks plans for HBO Nordic and Sherlock Holmes heads to Finland.

Goteborg Film Festival’s first Nordic award for Best TV Drama Script, worth $23,000 (Sek 200,000) and funded by the Nordisk Film & TV Fond, has been presented to Nobel screenwriters Mette M Bolstad and Stephen Uhlander.

Nrk’s Nobel is a Homeland-style drama about a Norwegian Lieutenant returning home from duty in Afghanistan who discovers a political conspiracy.

The prize’s jury included Lars Blomgren of Filmlance, producer Gudrun Giddings, consultant Isabelle Pechcou and critic Leena Virtanen.

They said of Nobel: “The script was precise, well-structured and solid. This is a strong, unpredictable drama with a sense of fresh realism. The story was thrilling and worked well also as a metaphor of the global instability between war and peace…This TV series has an impressive complexity in the scriptwriting, no loose ends and no inconsistency. There is no filter to the truth. It is so transparent...

World premieres include Fanny Ardant’s Stalin’s Couch [pictured], Elisabeth E. Schuch’s The Book Of Birdie, Erlingur Ottar Thoroddsen’s Rift, and Manuel Concha’s Blind Alley.

Goteborg Film Festival has announced its programme of nearly 450 films from 84 countries to screen during the festival’s 40th anniversary edition (Jan 27-Feb 6).

As reported earlier, the festival will kick off with Dome Karukoski’s Tom Of Finland.

The eight films (all world premieres) competing for the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film – with a prize of $110,500 (Sek 1m) — are as follows:

Tom Of Finland by Dome Karukoski (Finland/Sweden/Denmark/Germany/Us)Beyond Dreams by Rojda Sekersöz (Sweden)The Ex-wife by Katja Wik (Sweden)Heartstone by Gudmundur A. Gudmundsson (Iceland/Denmark)Sámi Blood by Amanda Kernell (Sweden/Denmark/Norway)Little Wing bySelma Vilhunen (Finland)The Man by Charlotte Sieling (Denmark)Handle With Care by Arild Andresen (Norway)

The Nordic documentary competition includes:

Citizen Schein by Maud Nycander, [link...

"The Man From Nowhere" (2010)

Directed by Lee Jeong-beom

Released by Well Go USA

Matt Singer said there's a sequence in this Korean revenge thriller that has "already taken up permanent residence in the Movie Hall of Fame section of my brain," so what more do you need? "Mother" star Won Bin stars as the man who is framed by local gangsters and seeks to retrieve the young girl he lives next door to after she's been kidnapped.

"Abducted" (2011)

Directed by Jon Bonnell

Released by Brain Damage Films

Originally called "Match.Dead," this 2009 thriller details the perils of online dating when a teen girl (Kathleen Benner) arranges a date with a man she soon learns is a psychopath (James Ray). Alan Smithee is the credited screenwriter on IMDb, so one might not want to go in with high expectations.

"Babysitters Beware" (2011)

Directed by Douglas Horn

Released by Phase 4 Films

If you're the...

Letters To Father Jacob is a simple, intimate (mostly) two character drama set in the stark countryside of Finland. The two characters are emotionally(and in the case of Jacob physically) damaged when they first meet , but at the end each has been greatly helped by their relationship. The film is a calm, quiet look at another culture and features two strong, subtle performances.

We first meet Leila(Kaarina Hazard) as her warden explains that she is being pardoned. The warden expresses surprise that during her incarceration she has never asked for a furlough or a family visit. The hard woman remains unemotional as she’s told that a priest has petitioned for her release and asked if she would live with him as his assistant. Without any other options, Leila travels by bus to Father Jacob’s desolate country home. There she is stunned to find that the elderly Jacob(Heikki Nousianinen) is blind.

Director: Klaus Haro Writer(s): Klaus Haro (screenplay), Jaana Makkonen (Original script & idea) Starring: Kaarina Hazard, Jukka Keinonen, Heikki Nousiainen, Kaija Pakarinen, Esko Roine Unexpectedly and undesirably pardoned from serving life in prison for murder, Leila (Kaarina Hazard) finds herself employed by Father Jacob (Heikki Nousiainen). Built like a linebacker and sporting a permanent scowl, Leila yields quite an intimidating and imposing presence; but Father Jacob, a blind priest residing in an isolated and dilapidated old house where he has dedicated his life to answering letters from people seeking prayers and advice, is not the least bit frightened. Leila has been hired to assist Father Jacob by reading the stacks of letters received by him and transcribing his dictated responses.

Finland’s official selection for the Academy Awards, “Letters to Father Jacob” is a modest movie about faith and forgiveness. With a scant running time of 74 minutes, the film keeps its story simple: Leila (Kaarina Hazard), a tough broad serving a life sentence, finds that the fate she resigned herself to is suddenly upended when she’s pardoned for her unnamed crime. With nowhere to go, she accepts a position as a personal assistant to a blind priest living alone in the bucolic countryside. She doesn’t do housework, she declares, but what Father Jacob (Heikki Nousiainen) needs from her is much more important: to read and answer the stack of letters that arrive daily asking for his prayers.

Leila, of course, thinks this is a ridiculous waste of time and unabashedly rolls her eyes in front of his pale blue opaque ones, even going so far as to dump...

A most sensitive and accomplished portrayal of self-discovery and acceptance. Emerging director Klaus Härö has three solid films behind him and this, his fourth, may be the best one yet. This is a man on a roll. Kaarina Hazard plays Leila, a woman imprisoned for life for an unstated, horrific, crime. As the warden reads her the statement of her conditional release she is impassive as the Stonehenge. This is the face of a woman who has lost all hope in humanity. The world has done the worst it could do to her and her release from prison has the same impact on her as the tasteless prison oatmeal she ate that morning. She lived her...

Stuart Hazeldine’s Exam (top); Kaarina Hazard, Heikki Nousiainen in Klaus Härö’s Letters to Father Jaakob (bottom) The Santa Barbara International Film Festival came to a close today. Held about in the coastal town 90 miles north of Los Angeles, the festival attracted a number of Hollywood personalities, including honorees Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. The information below about the Santa Barbara festival’s award winners is from the Sbiff press release. The Panavision Spirit Award for Independent Cinema, given to a unique independent feature that has been made outside mainstream Hollywood, went to Exam (Us Premiere), directed by Stuart Hazeldine, and starring Luke Mably, Nathalie Cox. Eight talented candidates have reached the final stage of selection to join [...]...