Festival Data:

• Established: 1972
• Genre: General
• Total Number of Films Screened: 100
• Accreditations: FIAPF

• Film Market
• Has Panels

Festival Website:

Festival Description:

The Norwegian International Film Festival is Norway’s major festival for film and cinema. HRH Crown Prince Haakon is the Patron of the festival, Liv Ullmann is the festival's Honorary President. NIFF's Main Program is devoted to feature films for theatrical release. Titles are selected on artistic merit. The festival cooperates closely with Norwegian and Scandinavian distributors in selecting films for screening. NIFF consists of four program sections and several annually changing sidebar programs:

Main program: The festival’s official programme consists of around twenty-five films that will receive a theatrical release in Norway during the coming fall/winter/spring.

New Nordic Films: The New Nordic Films programme will consist of around new 30 films from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland.

The Children’s Film Fest: The programme consists of new children’s films that will receive a theatrical release during the fall.

15+: 15+ is a special youth programme, in which we screen films that take young people seriously – engaging, exciting and powerful films that portray young people in a time of transition and change.

Sidebar programs

Special screenings: These films have no other common denominator than the fact that they do not naturally fit into the main programme.

Cinema Italia: The festival’s heart beats especially hard for Italy and Italian cinema, and we frequently present new Italian films in co-operation with the organisation Filmitalia.

French Touch Selection: Also the French cinema has a natural place in Haugesund, and this programme collects every French production and co-production at the festival, in co-operation with, among others, Unifrance and Centre Culturel Français Oslo.

The Critics’ Week: These are films selected by recognised international film critics. The programme is presented for the tenth time, in co-operation with the Norwegian Film Critics’ Association.

Videorama: This has been a regular feature of the festival since 2001 and consists of around seven new quality films that will be released straight to the DVD market. One of the films is selected as the festival’s candidate for a nomination in the Amanda Award category Best Film Straight to DVD.

Amanda, the Norwegian film and television award, was established in 1985, and since 2005 it has been a film award only. For the first twenty years, the award ceremony was – with the exception of the Nordic Amanda in 1993 – a co-operation between the Norwegian International Film Festival and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. This changed in 2006 when the Amanda show was broadcasted on TV2. The next three years the award ceremony was produced by Nordisk Film AS, from 2009 it has been produced by Dinamo Story.