Thank you for joining us at this year's festival

Who would have thought that the 30th edition of Films From the South would take place in living rooms around the country?

2020 has been a peculiar year for all of us. Earlier in the year, the festivals Arab Film Days and Oslo Pix – which we at Stiftelsen Festivalkontoret also arrange – had to be canceled, and this edition of Films From the South was completely digital. We managed to arrange a couple of physical screenings before Oslo went into a lockdown in November, and cinemas again had to be closed.

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Good customer support is essential during a digital festival. Luckily, we had a couple of assistants.

We have made plan after plan, and again and again we have ended up doing something completely different. But we haven’t given up! The physical events we were able to arrange in 2020 were wonderful, and although we faced numerous challenges during our first ever digital festival, we managed to present a broadly appealing festival program to a national audience, and the festival seems to have been successful overall. We are especially happy that around 5500 pupils have attended our free, digital school screenings during the festival.

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From a school screening at Humanistskolen.

We would of course have preferred to meet our loyal festival audience in person at the cinema, and to have been able to enjoy the community of people that love to see quality films at the cinema. Instead, this year has been dominated by hand sanitizer, face masks and social distancing, rather than the communal experience of sharing a bucket of popcorn while a film transports you to a different reality.

We look forward to an exciting 2021, where we once again are able to meet at the cinema.


A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,
the Stiftelsen Festivalkontoret staff

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The film copies are about to be returned all over the world, thanks to our sponsor UPS.