Faith in Film Award 2018 at Tromsø

"Per Fugelli: Siste resept" (Per Fugelli: The Last Prescription), a documentary by Norwegian film director Erik Poppe, has won the 2nd Faith in Film Award at the Tromsø International Film Festival 2018 (January 15-21). The film portrays the doctor, professor of social medicine and human rights activist Per Fugelli, who died from cancer in 2017. In 2015, he denied further medical treatment and, as the festival catalogue says, "challenged the taboo of speaking about death by writing books about his own struggle with fatality."

The Faith in Film Award was established in 2017 at the Tromsø International Film Festival to honour films which contribute to a better understanding of the significance of religion in the daily lifes of modern people. It carries a prize money of € 1.000, donated by the founders of the award: the Center for Art, Culture and Church, the Norwegian Church Academies, and the Tromsø Church Academy.

Members of the 2018 jury were Faten Mahdi Al Hussaini, NRK Program Host and part of the initiative of «Ring of Peace» at the Oslo Synagogue; Sigmund Nesset, Head librarian at the Tromsø University Library; and Anne Veiteberg, Editor of Verbum Publishing and former Secretary General of the Tromsø Church Academy.