Fittingly, the Nordic Film Festival is held during our Australian winter, but there’s warmth for the soul in a 2026 program packed with cinematic legends, breathtaking landscapes, unique storytelling and cultural insights.
Screening nationally through July and August at Palace, Palace Nova and Luna Palace Cinemas, the festival features the best new cinema from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
Naming rights partner for the second year, Hurtigruten, are long associated with the Nordic region, having plied Norway’s picture-book coastline for more than 130 years, offering genuine and authentic experiences. Managing director (APAC), Damian Perry, says it’s a natural extension for Hurtigruten to celebrate the richness of Nordic storytelling.
Opening the festival is the powerful Icelandic drama Árru from debut director Elle Sofe Sara. The film follows a family of Sàmi reindeer herders whose community and way of life isthreatened by a proposed mining project. Weaving together drama with bursts of traditional song (joik) and movement, the film draws on cultural expression to explore a genuine connection to the environment.
Direct from winning the Palme d’Or at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, the festival centrepiece, Fjord, shot on the western coast of Norway, stars Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan as a Romanian-Norwegian conservative couple facing scrutiny after moving to the wife’s progressive remote Norwegian hometown.
Icelandic comedy/drama The Love That Remains is this year’s special presentation. This 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, along with the undisputed star of the show, Panda, an Icelandic sheep dog.
Another special presentation is 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.
The artistic legacy of eccentric Swedish director Bo Widerberg is explored in the documentary Being Bo Widerberg. 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 chronicles Widerberg’s remarkable journey.
In conjunction with the documentary, there are screenings of Bo Widerberg’s films including Ådalen 31, a gripping blend of political history and adolescent awakening; Raven’s End, his unflinching 1936 Malmö portrait that follows young dreamer Anders, as he pursues his writing ambitions; and arguably Widerberg’s masterpiece, Elvira Madigan, which follows two lovers who abandon everything for each other.
Winner of the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film at the 2026 Göteborg Film Festival, The Last Resort 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 boat loads 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 are the comedies, Offroad, in which a woman’s stable life begins to unravel during a girls’ trip, and The Last Viking, featuring brothers on a crime adventure filled with unpredictable twists and turns as they attempt to recover stolen loot.
The blackly comic Finnish drama, The Kidnapping of a President, is based on a bizarre true story about the chaos that ensues when a group of far-right officers drunkenly decide to start a revolution in 1930.
Sweden’s stylish psychological thriller Doctor 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, winner of the Audience Award at the 2026 Göteborg Film Festival. This meditative drama set in the small, rustic town of Åmotforsin is an exploration of love, nature, and the cycles of life.
From Norway comes the box office hit drama, The Battle Of Oslo, 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, based on a 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.
Other films in the line-up include the sharply observed drama The Guest; the Danish coming-of-age drama Weightless; the feel-good comedy The Pension Heist, starring some of Norway’s most beloved actors; and Home, a darkly funny, brutally honest and unexpectedly tender romantic dramedy from Norway.
The 2026 Hurtigruten Nordic Film Festival takes place at cinemas around Australia from July to August. Dates vary by location; you can buy tickets and see the full program here.
