Umeå European Film Festival 2020 online

The seventh edition of Umeå European Filmfestival is lighting up the dark autumn gloom from the 25 to the 29th of November 2020.

This year is, as you all know, an unusual year and, because of the new restrictions on public gatherings, the festival has cancelled all physical screenings and events. But, a part of the festival has from early on been planned to take place online – at Draken Film!

In the digital selection we find this year’s seven films that compete for the Storspoven award – the festival’s stipend for the best film produced in northern Sweden – as well as four other cinema gems.

Stream the films directly at Draken Film between the 25-29th of November – a digital film pass costs 69 SEK and gives access to the entire digital programme.

If you already subscribe to Draken Film, the films will be available to you during the whole festival.

Digital programme Umeå European Film Festival 2020:

Perspektiv från norr – Storspoven 2020

Every year Umeå European Film Festival together with Film i Västerbotten hand out the scholarship Storspoven. It’s awarded to the best film in the festival section Northern perspectives. The competing films are nominated by the festival and the winner is then selected by a jury – this year consisting of Hugo Lilja, Clara Bodén and John-Kristian Dalseth.

Inside the Diamond
Director: Viktor Johansson Year: 2020 Length: 1 h 15 min Country: Sweden
Inside the Diamond is a kaleidoscopic journal from an ice society. The hollow and obsolete diamond factory refuses to die. Its howling soul continues to haunt the locals of Robertsfors, Sweden. We follow bodybuilding refugees, urban explorers and hypersomniacs in their search for hope and meaning. A psychogeographic exploration. A transcendental trip. Come with. Come with. Inside the diamond.

Graze
Director: Inga Kempe Year: 2019 Length: 28 min Country: Sweden
In the early 1900s, the farmer wife Mia struggles to raise her unruly foster daughter, but the village,the church and her family oppose her. If Mia doesn’t succeed in having the girl confirmed by the church, the girl will be sent away.

Sunny Girl
Director: Jana Bringlöv Ekspong Year: 2020 Lenght: 17 min Country: Sweden
Britt, who has dementia and lives at a caring home, wakes up not knowing that her daughter is dead. Somehow she has to face the fact, but nobody is telling her.

Friendsies
Director: Åsa Lekberg Steinsvik Year: 2020 Length: 22 min Country: Sweden
A feel good movie about aging? This is a story about Monica and Jack. When they both lost the love of their lives – this is what they decided to do. Their story will put a smile on your face, maybe make you cry. But one thing is for sure – it will make you think about what you are going to do when it’s your turn.

Clench
Director: Emelie Boman Year: 2020 Length: 9 min Country: Sweden
In this dark thriller a new genre is emerging where horror meets dance film, interlaced and exciting, in a way that you probably have never seen before. When Lova doesn’t come back from her bicycle ride her mother goes out looking for her. What she finds in the dark forest is far from what she could ever imagine. The search for her daughter quickly turns into a nightmare.

To Discharge
Director: Amanda Adele Björk Year: 2019 Length: 30 min Country: Swedene
To Discharge is a dark comedy about a couple, Ingrid and August. They are in their thirties and can’t communicate with each other any longer. Therefore they decide to go to an alternative therapy camp to save their relationship. While there they devote themselves to primal play, laughter therapy and sessions with a self-appointed therapist. But everything doesn’t go as they expected.

Want More
Director: Bo Johan Sörensen Year: 2019 Length: 15 min Country: Sweden
Daniel and Adam decide to rob the kiosk in the area where they live. They find to their surprise that there is hardly any money in the cash register. But instead of giving up, they make a vital decision – they decide to kidnap the clerk in a try to run the store themselves.

International features

Summerwar
Director: Moritz Schultz Year: 2019 Length: 1 h 19 min Country: Germany / Ukraine
The twelve-year-olds Jasmine and Jastrip are looking forward to the summer camp organised every year by the ultranationalist Azov Regiment for hundreds of Ukrainian children. During two weeks they will learn how to make the bed perfectly, the benefits of group identity and how to shoot with Kalashnikov. At the same time, the real war is raging in the eastern part of Ukraine. The summer also consists of playing and hanging out with newfound friends, but the goal is to make them proud Ukrainians who are ready to fight and die for their country. Summerwar shows up close how a radicalization process works and leaves no one indifferent.

Jiyan
Director: Süheyla Schwenk Year: 2019 Length: 1 h 11 min Country: Germany
A young couple has moved to Berlin and is trying to create a decent living in Süheyla Schwenks’ compact yet grand feature debut. Hiyat and Harun are young, obviously in love and Hiyat is pregnant with their first child. They live with Haruns’ uncle waiting for a residence permit and better conditions to find something of their own. They live with Haruns’ uncle waiting for a residence permit and better conditions to find something of their own. Jiyan contains scenes of both love and despair that really grabs hold of you. It’s a film that relentlessly takes ordinary people’s party in an unforgiving game against inhumane social structures.

The Other Lamb
Director: Malgorzata Szumowska Year: 2019 Duration: 1 h 35 min Country: Ireland / Poland / USA
Selah has lived all her life in a sect consisting of religious female members subservient to its lone male leader called The Shepherd. The women, that Shepherd himself calls the Flock, are divided into his wives and daughters and their position within the sect is defined by the number of children born – of the desired, female, gender. Young Selah is enchanted by The Shepherd’s charisma until she discovers the darkness that has settled within him. She begins to question the leader’s teachings and even her own reality. A basic notion that blind submission to a patriarch is bad news for women, children and probably men as well.

In Between Dying
Director: Hilal Baydarov Year: 2020 Duration: 1 h 28 min Country: Azerbajdzjan / Mexico / USA
A young man, Davud, is found guilty of man-slaughter but escapes in this existential roadmovie, whose dizzying cinematography sometimes makes you lose your breath. On his journey, he is looking for his wife and his children, whose faces he has never seen, and he seems to bring both joy and/or misery to those people he meets along the way. Director Hilal Baydarov has with In Between Dying created a memorable and dialog sparse cinematic journey through the Azerbaijani countryside, leaving you full of wonder.

The Squad
Regissör: Stéphanie Gillard Year: 2020 Duration: 1 h 28 min Country: France
Real Madrid 1956–60, Ajax 1969–73, AC Milan 1988–94 or perhaps Barcelona 2008–13? In the future, when we look back at club team football’s most successful teams of all time, Olympique Lyonnais’ current women’s team should be impossible to overlook. A team that gets far from the same attention as its male counterparts but which for almost a decade has dominated football both nationally and internationally. In Stéphanie Gillard’s documentary The Squad, we get close to the champions in how they prepare for decisive matches, discuss the regrowth of the players’ respective national teams, and see how team captain Wendie Renard acts as a mentor to the squad’s younger talents. It is a deeply impressive insight into how the conditions as professionals within the elite are today, but also an important reminder of how long it took to get there.