Hurtigruten Nordic Film Festival to warm up winter with huge 2026 program

Palace has officially announced the full program for the 2026 Hurtigruten Nordic Film Festival, screening in Perth from Thursday, July 23 to Sunday, August 16 at Palace Cinemas Raine Square, Luna Cinemas Leederville, and Luna on SX, Fremantle.

Featuring the best new cinema from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, this year’s line-up showcases cinematic legends, breathtaking landscapes, and the unique storytelling and profound cultural insights that have earned Nordic cinema a distinct place in the film world.

Opening the festival is the powerful Icelandic drama Árru from debut director Elle Sofe Sara, which follows a family of Sàmi reindeer herders whose community and way of life are threatened by a proposed mining project. Weaving together grounded drama with bursts of exquisite traditional song (joik) and movement, the film draws on cultural expression to explore a breathtakingly genuine connection to the environment.

Icelandic comedy/drama The Love That Remains (Ástin sem eftir er) from director Hlynur Pálmason (A White, White Day, Godland) is this year’s Special Presentation. This brilliant and bittersweet film tenderly captures a year in the life of a family of five as the parents navigate their separation, exploring love, family, and shared memories. It also features a ‘Palme d’Og’ winning performance from Pálmason’s own dog Panda, an Icelandic sheepdog.

Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value, Fjord) delivers another standout performance in Special Presentation Butterfly, an intriguing drama about a pair of estranged sisters who reunite after their mother’s sudden passing. The sisters travel to the Canary Islands, where they grew up at a resort, after their mother’s mysterious death at an esoteric retreat in the mountains.

Closing the festival is the 60th anniversary screening of Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece Persona. Liv Ullmann, in the first of many iconic collaborations with the director, plays a screen actress who has fallen into an unexplained silence, while Bibi Andersson is captivating as the talkative young nurse assigned to her care in a secluded island retreat. The two women mysteriously experience a slow merging of the inner lives in an isolated, dreamlike meditation on the human psyche.

In the fascinating documentary Being Bo Widerberg (I huvudet på Bo), the acclaimed and eccentric Swedish director Bo Widerberg’s journey is chronicled. In the shadow of Ingmar Bergman, Widerberg became Sweden’s most influential filmmaker. From the progressive early 1960s in Malmö, where he worked as a writer and film critic, to his successes as a director in Stockholm and adventures in Cannes and New York, the film showcases Widerberg’s incredible artistic legacy.

In conjunction with the documentary, there are selected screenings of Bo Widerberg’s films, including Ådalen 31, a gripping blend of political history and adolescent awakening; Raven’s End (Kvarteret Korpen), his unflinching 1936 Malmö portrait that follows young dreamer Anders as he pursues his writing ambitions while slowly suffocating beneath poverty and dysfunction; and arguably Widerberg’s masterpiece, Elvira Madigan, which follows two lovers who abandon everything for each other.

In the sharply observed drama The Guest (Gæsten), Trine Dyrholm stars as an estranged mother determined to prove herself. Hoping to rejoin the family, Vibeke (Dyrholm) appears unannounced at her grandson’s naming ceremony.

Winner of the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film at the 2026 Göteborg Film Festival, The Last Resort (Paradis), is an absorbing drama that follows a Danish family on holiday at an all-inclusive resort. Anticipating a well-deserved and restful break, reality hits hard when they witness boatloads of refugees hitting the shores and they are forced to question how much they should risk to help a person in need.

Also from Denmark is the dark comedy The Last Viking (Den sidste viking), reuniting writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen (Riders of Justice) with Mads Mikkelsen (Another Round) and Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Department Q) in their sixth project together. The pair star as brothers on a crime adventure filled with unpredictable twists and turns as they attempt to unlock Mandfred’s (Mikkelsen) memory to recover stolen loot.

In Offroad, an entertaining Danish comedy from Rasmus Heide, a woman’s stable life begins to unravel during a girls’ trip, leading her and her friends into an impulsive and chaotic journey; and the winner of the New Director’s Award at the San Sebastián Film Festival is Emilie Thalund’s Weightless (Vægtløs). A bold and intimate exploration of adolescent desire and identity, this coming-of-age drama follows the transformative summer of a fifteen-year-old girl at a Danish summer health camp.

The Kidnapping of a President (Presidentin Kyyditys) is a blackly comic drama based on a bizarre true story about the chaos that ensues when a group of far-right Finnish officers drunkenly decide to start a revolution in 1930. Lieutenant Colonel Eero Kuussaari (Jussi Vatanen, Fallen Leaves) impulsively orders the kidnapping of retired former president Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg (Pertti Sveholm, 100 Litres of Gold) but then doesn’t recall his orders the following day, having left the escapade to a group of young, eager, and inexperienced soldiers.

In the heartfelt and delightful drama A Light That Never Goes Out (Jossain on valo joka ei sammu), a successful flautist who returns to his hometown in need of recuperation is drawn into the world of experimental music when he reconnects with an old school friend; and in 1890s Finland, Tell Everyone (Kerro Kaikille) portrays a free-spirited young woman who fights to hold on to hope, friendship, and forbidden love while confined on an isolated sanatorium island.

Sweden’s stylish psychological thriller Doctor Glas (Doktor Glas) brings a bold and fresh new perspective to Hjalmar Söderberg’s acclaimed 1905 novel. Desire, guilt, and obsession are portrayed through the eyes of Gabriel Glas (played by Isac Calmroth, also one of the co-writers), a reclusive young doctor whose fascination with fashion icon Helga Gregorius spirals into madness.

Also from Sweden is The Quiet Beekeeper (Biodlaren), winner of the Audience Award at the 2026 Göteborg Film Festival. This meditative drama set in the small, rustic town of Åmotfors in the Swedish region of Värmland, close to the Norwegian border, is an exploration of love, nature, and the cycles of life, seen through the eyes of a father and daughter longing for connection.

When 39-year-old Anni has to move back in with her mother after a scandalous incident on live television, her life goes off the rails in Home (Heim), a darkly funny, brutally honest, and unexpectedly tender romantic dramedy from Norway; in The Pension Heist (Pensjonskuppet), three women set out to steal from the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund after one discovers her husband is having an affair in this feel-good crowd-pleasing heist comedy featuring some of Norway’s most beloved actors.

Norwegian box office hit drama The Battle of Oslo (Blücher) is a gripping true story of courage under fire recounting the decisive actions of Colonel Birger Eriksen during World War II, whose fateful choice in 1940 shaped his nation’s destiny.

Recently winning six Icelandic Film Awards, the thriller The Fires (Eldarnir), based on the best-selling novel, tells the story of an accomplished volcanologist’s life, which is upended by both a romantic affair and a volcanic eruption that threatens Reykjavík.

The 2026 Hurtigruten Nordic Film Festival hits Palace Cinemas, Luna Leederville, and Luna on SX from Thursday, July 23 to Sunday, August 16, 2026. For the full program and ticket sales head to nordicfilmfestival.com.au