This fall at Scandinavia House, experience Nordic comedy at its darkest with “Svart Humor”! “If there’s a dead body in Denmark, someone is going to make a joke about it,” director Anders Jensen once said; Nordic comedies are as known for their deadpan, dry wit as for their occasionally noir subject matter, celebrating the “svart/sort” (dark) side of life’s hilarities. All screenings take place on Wednesday evenings at 7 PM.
The series kicks off this week on Wednesday, September 13 with the pitch-black Norwegian satire Sick of Myself (dir. Kristoffer Borgli, 2022), “a 95-minute-long insanity spiral and nihilist’s delight” (Cinemacy)! Self-involved Oslo residents Signe (Kristine Kujath) and Thomas (Eirik Sæther) are equally insufferable and desperate to be noticed, until Thomas’s artistic success drives Signe to grotesque attempts to attract attention. One of John Waters’ “Best Films of 2022” (and NY Magazine’s “Best Movies of 2023”), Sick of Myself reflects our warped, celebrity-obsessed times. The series continues September 27 with The Grump: In Search of an Escort (dir. Mika Kaurismäki, 2022). When the Grump (Heikki Kinnunen) sets out to replace his beloved 1972 Ford Escort, he winds up on a cantankerous reconciliation journey with his estranged brother in Germany.
On October 4, Hilmar Oddsson’s “enjoyably dark and dour comedy road movie” (Screen Review), Driving Mum (Iceland, 2022) follows Jon (Prostur Leo Gunnarsson) who, after his mother passes away in 1980s Iceland, honors her last wish—by driving her body to her birthplace, propped up in the back seat of his car. And winner of Best Picture and Vision Award from IndiePix, Marianne Blicher’s Miss Viborg (Denmark, 2022) on October 11 follows a former beauty queen and senior citizen Solvej (Ragnhild Kaasgaard), who forms an unlikely friendship with her rebellious 17-year-old neighbor Kate (Isabella Møller Hansen).
On October 18, Day By Day (Sweden, 2022), the newest film from The 100-Year-Old-Man director Felix Herngren, is the life-affirming journey of five different people on a camper-van trip to honor a last wish. On October 25, the Finnish dark comedy The Woodcutter Story (Metsurin Tarina, dir. Mikko Myllylahti, 2022), is the Job-like tale of the woodcutter Pepe (Jarkko Lahti), whose optimism and idyllic small-town life are deeply tested by chaos, strife, and surreal adventures; acclaimed as “a Kaurismäkian variant on Twin Peaks, with a soupçon of Fargo” (Screen International).
The series concludes November 1 with “an uncompromisingly brilliant comedy about unwanted pregnancy,” Ninjababy (dir. Yngvild Sve Flikke, Norway, 2021)! Rakel (Kristine Kujath Thorp) discovers she is six months pregnant after a not-so-romantic one-night stand. As she navigates her next moves, the “ninjababy” leaps from the drawings of her notebook; in a fun and touching film about the paradox of getting pregnant when you’re not ready for motherhood. Based on the comic novel “Fallteknikk” by Inga Sætre (who also created the film’s animations) Ninjababy won Best European Comedy at the 2021 European Film Awards and a Crystal Bear at the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.