Winter is here and so too is the 2026 Hurtigruten Nordic Film Festival, presenting the best new cinema from the Nordic region this July until August at Luna Leederville and Luna on SX. Festival goers are invited to plunge into a unique cultural journey through Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Iceland with this year’s brilliant and diverse line up featuring award-winners, box office hits and thought provoking debuts from a new generation of filmmakers in tandem with the latest new films from the region’s most loved actors and directors.

Group and School enquiries please email: groupbookings@lunapalace.com.au
For general and media enquires please email: caitlin@lunapalace.com.au

SPECIAL PRESENTATION

The first Special Presentation is Icelandic comedy/drama THE LOVE THAT REMAINS (Ástin sem eftir er) from director Hlynur Pálmason (A White, White Day, Godland). 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 'Palm Dog’ winning performance from Pálmason's own dog Panda, an Icelandic sheep dog.

Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value, Fjord) stars in festival Special Presentation BUTTERFLY, an intriguing drama about a pair of estranged sisters who must reunite after their mother's sudden passing. The sisters travel to Gran Canaria, where they grew up at a resort, following their mother's mysterious death at an esoteric retreat in the mountains, plunging them headfirst into a journey of revelations about their childhood and the hidden heart of the tourist island.

HIGHLIGHTS

From debut director Elle Sofe Sara, comes the festival highlight and powerful, music-filled new drama Árru follows a family of Sàmi reindeer herders whose fight to protect their Indigenous lands from a proposed copper mining project exposes long-buried family secrets. 

Winner of six Icelandic Film Awards, a box office hit in Iceland, and adapted from the best-selling novel by Sigríður Hagalín Björnsdóttir, THE FIRES is a breathtaking thriller directed and co-written by Ugla Hauksdóttir in her debut feature film that follows a volcanologist facing two simultaneous disasters.

And Mads Mikkelsen (Another Round) gives a career-best performance in the humorous, intriguing, and devious tale about identity THE LAST VIKING, starring Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Department Q) alongside a stellar ensemble.

To close the festival, we are celebrating the 60th Anniversary of Ingmar Bergman's radical masterpiece PERSONA, on the big screen. Enjoy a Elderflower cocktail on arrival.