The inaugural Scandinavian Film Festival is set to heat up the Australian Winter this July with the coolest films from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland hitting screens nationally.

Presented by Palace and screening exclusively at Palace Cinema locations, the Scandinavian Film Festival will delight audiences with the best drama, crime and comedy of the region.

With Scandinavian crime drama the hottest property of the last few years, it only made sense to delve even deeper into Nordic film. Australian audiences will have the chance to experience the breadth of style, humour, action and mystery that Scandinavian film has to offer. Here are a few titles from the 2014 edition to whet your appetite…

The Festival will open with the Swedish blockbuster The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Hundraaringen som klev ut genom fonstret och forsvann). A delightful, colourful comedy of unexpected surprises based on the hugely successful international bestselling novel by Jonas Jonasson which was published in more than 35 countries. This is the unlikely story of Allan Karlsson (played by popular Swedish actor/comedian Robert Gustafsson), a 100-year-old man with an eventful past who keeps stumbling into extraordinary circumstances.

Easy Money III: Life Deluxe (2013) is the final installment following JW, an economics student who falls into the seductive world of drug running. To celebrate, the entire trilogy will be screened starting with Sweden’s top-grossing film of 2010 Easy Money (Snabba cash) and Easy Money II: Hard to Kill (2012) all of which star Joel Kinnaman (RoboCop, The Killing). Based on Jens Lapidus’ international best-selling novel, Easy Money is a taut, intelligent feature, which went on to be presented by fan Martin Scorsese in the USA and UK.

From Finland, director Taru Mäkelä’s August Fools (Mieleton Elokuu) is a smart, uplifting comedy set in the context of the Cold War. Marvellously multilayered, the story is loosely based on real political events, paired with a delightful romance. Set in 1962, a middle-aged milliner, part-time clairvoyant, is forced to revisit the past when the man she loved 20 years ago and thought dead walks into her little hat shop in Helsinki.

The rugged, isolated beauty of Iceland is showcased in the powerful family drama Metalhead (Málmhaus) – a story of loss and grief led by a breathtaking and award-winning performance by Thorbjörg Helga Thorgilsdóttir. As a 12 year-old, Hera (Thorgilsdóttir) witnesses the tragic accident that kills her older brother, Baldur. But not long after the loss, it is as though the heavy-metal-loving Baldur has never left her side as Hera takes on her brother’s identity, claiming his wardrobe, record collection and electric guitar.

A complicated tangle of race, love and family is explored in I Am Yours (Jeg er din) from Norway. Amrita Acharia’s (Game of Thrones) multifaceted performance is captivating and sympathetic in the taut, intelligent relationship drama by director Iram Haq.

Denmark’s Mikkel Norgaard demonstrates Danish suspense at its best in The Keeper of Lost Causes (Kvinden i buret). Scripted by Nikolaj Arcel (the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and A Royal Affair) and based on the international bestselling crime-thriller of the same title, the film follows a police officer who gets reassigned to a dead-end new department for old, terminated cases. Although given explicit orders to only read and sort through the cases, not a single day passes before he is thrown headfirst into a mystery of a well-known female politician.

The full program launches in early June.

For more information visit www.scandinavianfilmfestival.com