Shortly, Denmark’s big film event, Copenhagen International Film Festival 2006, kicks off. On the evening of Sunday 3 September the festival programme will be launched with free drinks and programme paper in four Copenhagen cinemas showing four different films.

When the fun begins for real on 21 September, the focus will be on ten films, namely those competing for The Golden Swan, the festival’s prestigious statuette. The Swan has become the emblem of the Copenhagen International Film Festival and, this year, it will be awarded in six different categories. The winners will be chosen by five established personalities in European film.

This year, Danish Ghita Nørby will be in charge of the jury which counts another actress, a photographer and two directors. Among other things, they will decide which film is to be honoured in the category of best film.
The Jury's composition


This year’s jury has five members from Denmark, Germany, Poland,
Italy/England and Hungary and they are the ones who will choose the Golden
Swan winners from among the selected 10 competition entries.

Ghita Nørby
Actress, Denmark.
Denmark’s first lady in her field. Like no other, Ghita Nørby has put her mark on Danish film and TV over the past 50 years. Her debut on the big screen was in the film The Young Have No Time (Ung Leg) (1956). Since then, she has taken part in more than 120 films and TV productions in Scandinavia and Germany. With her part in the Oscar nominated Waltzing Regitze (Dansen med Regitze), the Palme d'Or winner Best Intentions (Den gode vilje), the Emmy winners Unit One (Rejseholdet) and The Eagle (Ørnen) and several other Danish and foreign awards she is a European film personality of an international stamp.

Among her finest performances – apart from her lead in Waltzing Regitze - is the role as Marie in Jan Troell’s Hamsun. But also the clever Ingeborg Skjern in Matador, the mother roles in Susanne Bier’s debut film Freud's Leaving Home (Freud flytter hjemmefra) and Per Fly’s Inheritance (Arven) as well as Rigmor in Lars von Triers The Kingdom (Riget), are all very much alive in the minds of the Danes. At the festival opening on 21 September, Ghita Nørby will receive a Golden Swan Lifetime Achievement Award.

Robby Müller
Photographer, the Netherlands
With Wim Wenders as director, Robby Müller made his first film when he was only 29 years old. The two continued their cooperation for many years but Müller has also worked with quite a few American directors, among others William Friedkin (To Live and Die in L.A., 1985) and Jim Jarmusch (Down by Law, 1986) as well as with our own Lars Von Trier (Breaking the Waves, 1996 and Dancer in the Dark, 2000). In 1997, Müller received a Robert for his photography in Breaking the Waves.

Pawel Pawlikowski
Director, England
Born in Poland in 1957, Pawel Pawlikowski moved to England to have his education. For the main part of his life, Pawlikowski has directed and worked on documentaries, yet in 2000 he took the plunge into the world of fiction. His debut film, the drama Last Resort, earned him a BAFTA award as most promising directorial debut and was the beginning of an international career as an established director. Moreover, for his film My Summer Of Love from 2004, shown at last year’s festival, Pawel Pawlikowski received a number of British awards.

Greta Scacchi
Actress, Italy/England
Greta Scacchi grew up in Italy but started her career in England, where she has taken part in a number of TV productions. Her feature film debut came in 1982 when she took part in Dominik Graf’s film Das Zweite Gesicht. Since then, she has figured in both European films and big Hollywood productions working with directors such as Robert Altman (The Player,1992), Alan J. Pakula (Presumed Innocent,1990) and Kevin Spacey (Beyond the Sea, 2004). Scacchi lives in England and was last seen in Danish cinemas in the Jodie Foster thriller Flightplan from 2005.

Kornél Mundruczó
Director, Hungary
Born in Budapest in 1975. Kornél Mundruczó is both director and professional actor. In 2000, he had his directorial debut with the feature film This I Wish and Nothing More and he has received numerous awards for his short films and feature films both at home and abroad. Among others, he won the silver leopard at Locarno IFF in 2002 for his film Pleasant Days and the year after his film Joan of Arc of the Night Bus was nominated for the independent section, Directors’ Fortnight, at the Cannes Film Festival. His latest work Johanna (2005) was shown at the Copenhagen International Film Festival last year and in Danish cinemas earlier this year.