ALEX'S FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS -- ANNO 2005 WITH A MERRY X-MAS TO ALL! 1.TROMSO, January -- A fantastic place to open the festival year if you love snow and don't mind fifteen minutes of daylight, MAX ...in January. That was just a joke, folks -- by late January you get almost a whole hour of sunlight -- around eleven AM -- but really, who needs it? ...when fest topper, irrepressible Norskie-American MARTHA OTTE, is guaranteed to provide a slate of such interesting films that you'll spend th...

The final judgements at Rouen, Festival of Nordic Cinema, were as follows :Best film, professional jury, "Uno" by Aksel Hennie, a very violent and morose Norwegian product, about scruffy Norwegian hoods who hang out at a boxing gymnasium on the underside of Oslo, directed as far as I can see, at people with deep agressive urges: Best actor, Bjorn Sundquist -- the barber of "My Favorite (Jealous) Hairdresser", and best actress, Monic Hendrickx, for her role as an attractive woman who has suffered...

"Freeze Frame", the first movie film debut by the young Irish director John Simpson, produced by Michael Casey, has won the competition section of Taormina FilmFest2004. The international jury, presided by Michael Verhoeven, has assigned the sum of 25 thousands euros "as contribution to the next second film" to the 40 years director, former advertising copywriter and Bbc promo director.In 2000 Simpson has written and directed the short film "Mysterious ways". On that occasion, Casey and Simpso...