For the second year in a row the audience award during the European Film Forum Scanorama, the biggest Lithuania autumn cultural event, goes to an Icelandic film. This year the audience selected Northern Comfort, film director Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, as their favorite feature film.
The main protagonist of the comedy Northern Comfort (Sigurðsson English language debut) is Sarah, a businesswoman suffering from a fear of flying. To prevent the planned vacation from falling through, she secretly takes a course to overcome her phobia and ends up in Reykjavík. Sigurðsson’s satirical sojourn lets us experience our fears of the unknown learning to become the better versions of ourselves.
Last year the audience award at the film festival Scanorama went to Hlynur Pálmason’s film Godland (2022), which was nominated for un Certain Regard Award at the Cannes Film Festival 2022. Godland pictures a young Danish priest sent to a remote part of Iceland at the end of the 19th century, losing a sense of his reality, mission and duty.
Godland was also screened by the film festival Scanorama during the Takk, Island event in Vilnius this summer, arranged to thank Icelanders for their support in Lithuania's struggle for independence.
A special photo session using the same old collodion technique as in the film Godland followed to commemorate the Icelandic community in Vilnius. The Ambassador Harald Aspelund from the Embassy of Iceland in Helsinki and the Icelandic visual artist Magnús Logi Kristinsson also participated in the film screening events in Vilnius.
Starting with the Scandinavian film outlook and later expanding to the whole of Europe and beyond, Scanorama attracts around 40,000 cinephiles. One of the main cultural events of the fall in Lithuania, Scanorama is the second biggest country's film festival.
Scanorama this year was held from 9 to 19 November in Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Siauliai, Alytus and Visaginas in Lithuania.
