Nordic Lights Film festival (NLFF) celebrates its 8th year with a great line-up with films from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and for the first time from the Faroese Islands, showing at the SIFF Film Center near Seattle Center.

The cutting-edge cinematic festival offers immersion into the world of Nordic films during the chilly winter season. Audiences are given the opportunity to share the long-standing film-making traditions and the newer art cinema style of the Nordic countries. NLFF is proud to bring people together to discover original stories through the lens of Nordic film makers.

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The first NLFF took place in 2009, spanning three days. It has been presented in partnership with the Nordic Heritage Museum, domestic and international film institutes, the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), Finlandia Foundation, Finnish Studies at UW, the Icelandic Club of Greater Seattle and SWEA (Swedish Women's Educational Association). This year the festival includes an opening reception on Thursday night, Jan. 12 — kicking off five days of films, adding an extra day from last year.

Opening night will include a screening of the Icelandic film "Reverse," which tells the story about two childhood friends who decide to drive around Iceland with their car in reverse. It doesn't take long for them to realize this probably wasn't the best idea in the world. Nothing goes as planned and almost everything goes wrong. Director/writer/actor Gunnar Hansson will attend the screening and the reception following.

Sweden's "Drifters" (Tjuvheder), by Peter Grönlund, is making its U.S. premier at NIFF while most of the movie cast makes its premier, too — nearly all the first-time actors were chosen by Grönlund for expressing their personal, real life experiences through this social political drama thriller. It screens on Friday, Jan. 13.

For the first time in NLFF history a Faroese component is featured in the festival. A shorts film program with up-and-coming filmmakers will be part of the program on Saturday, Jan. 14. Sakaris Stórá, Heiðrik á Heygum and Andrias Høgenni from the Faroese Islands will host a Q&A session following the screening.

Other highlights include the Danish film "The Commune," which received the Cinema of Scandinavia Awards for Best Danish Film in 2016. The Finnish film "The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki" is Finland’s Oscars submission for Best Foreign Language Film that also received The Cinema of Scandinavia Awards for Best Finnish Film in 2016. The documentary "Reindeer in My Saami Heart" by Australian film maker Janet Merewether, tells the story of Inghilda Tapio, an inspirational writer and performer in Saapmi, Sweden’s Arctic Circle.

The festival takes place at the SIFF Film Center in Seattle on January 12-16, 2017. For tickets and more information see http://nordicmuseum.org/nlff.