At Haugesund, the “Nordic Model” looked less like a fixed formula than a system designed to absorb risk. Across New Nordic Films (August 25-28), projects moved freely between social satire, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, coming-of-age and politically charged genre work, suggesting an industry still willing to back singular ideas even as financing and distribution grow harder.
The slate was unusually bold. Jens Lien’s Joe’s Assignment imagines a near future where automation has made human labor obsolete, using absurd comedy to ask what happens to identity once work disappears. Nataša Urban’s Vagina Dentata turns motherhood into body horror, while Finnish project Elektra explores ambition, power and inequality through a gaming environment. Danish-Norwegian-German Anathema probes belonging and the coercive logic of closed communities. Vegard Dahle’s zombie comedy Grandmonster, meanwhile, folds dementia, aging and horror into a nursing-home outbreak.
What makes such projects possible is not simply generous public funding, but the way Nordic structures can connect with financing systems elsewhere in Europe. France, this year’s focus country, offered an especially revealing case study. Producers at Haugesund repeatedly described French and Nordic partners as culturally compatible, while also acknowledging the “Tetris” required to reconcile territorial spending rules, minority financing and multiple national funds.
Morten Tyldum’s Ibelin, starring Adolescence actor-showrunner Stephen Graham and mounted across Norway, France, the U.K., Belgium and the Czech Republic, showed how far that model can scale. The wider conversation around CNC support, Eurimages and minority co-production mechanisms pointed to a system whose strength lies precisely in its ability to combine national backing with international capital and production expertise, with panelists describing France as a particularly natural partner for Nordic producers — more so than established co-production territories such as Germany or Italy.
Distribution remains the harder part. A Europa Distribution case study contrasted the international success of Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value with the more modest theatrical performance of Hlynur Pálmason’s The Love That Remains. The lesson was clear: the Nordic label still carries prestige, but festival acclaim alone does not convert into admissions. Local marketing, stars, release timing and long-term relationships with filmmakers remain decisive.
That tension may be the clearest definition of the Nordic model in 2026. It is not a machine for producing one recognizable kind of film. It is an ecosystem capable of financing creative risk, finding partners beyond the region and adapting each title to different markets. New Nordic Films itself opened with Cristian Mungiu’s Norwegian-Romanian Fjord, a co-production also involving France and other Nordic partners; fittingly, the market ended by rewarding Grandmonster, one of its most eccentric propositions.
Read more: Cinema & Video International Issue #209
