First and foremost amongst the program is The Absent One (July 16 at 6.30pm and July 22 at 1.30pm), second in the adaptations of the Department Q books of Jussi Adler-Olsen, often cited as the contender to knock Stieg Larssen's Millennium novels off the most-favoured and best-sold lists. The film is a sequel to last year's The Keeper of Lost Causes and reunites stars Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Fares Fares as the two detectives responsible for the cold-case division of the Copenhagen police who this time out are determined to uncover the unsolved case of teenage deaths at an exclusive Danish boarding school that has driven their colleague to his own suicide.

Director Mikkel Norgaard, who helmed both productions, finds himself a man in demand thanks to the box-office power the two have commanded. "I've been doing interviews for this film across Switzerland , Germany, France, Italy, and Scandi-Noir is all they want to talk about," Norgaard says. Fans of television series like The Killing, Borgen, Wallander and The Bridge will be familiar with that dark diffuse light that gives Norse Noir its own particular look. "I grew up with that atmosphere, blue and cold," says Norgaard, "So I was determined to give the Department Q films another tone."

He cites Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershoi, American director David Fincher and the photographer Gregory Crewdson as influences on his visual style. "I've learned that lighting is as much a character of the film as the characters themselves," he says.

Like many of us, he's also a big fan of Scandinavian directors, mentioning Tomas Let The Right One In Alfredson and Lars Von Trier, but also saying he's excited about the new generation of directors coming up. "I'm interested to see what tone is coming next," Norgaard says.

Mikkel Norgaard and his lead actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas attended film school together in Copenhagen. "We've been wanting to work together for so long," he says. The Danish director enjoyed the chance to further develop the characters he established in The Keeper of Lost Causes.

"In that first film it was about us getting to know them and them getting to know each other," he says, "But coming back it was about pushing each other, getting the best out of each other, not just the character but the team, the cast the DOP, the production designer, like a family."

While a third Adler-Olsen novel is currently being filmed, Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland has been called in to stand behind the camera as Norgaard is busy working on a long-planned sequel to his 2010 film Klown. I'm not a big fan of clowns but I do wish him well.

The Scandinavian Film Festival this year opens with the IKEA-sledging Norwegian-Swedish comedy Here's Harrold (Tues 14 July 7pm and Sat 25 July 6.30pm) about a man (Björn Granath) who loses his business, house and savings when an IKEA opens up next door to his 40-year-old family furniture business. Deciding to take his fate into his own hands, he heads to Sweden to kidnap IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad.

The Swedish entry Young Sophie Bell (Sun 19 July 6.30pm and Tues 21 July 7pm) is inspired by Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, so expect great music and enigmatic existentialism with great cinematography. Sophie (Felice Jankell) and Alice (Hedda Stiernstedt) are off to Berlin to begin their life after high school but Alice suddenly disappears leading Sophie on an investigative and eye-opening journey through the city and into herself.

Finnish cinema makes itself felt this year with six of the Festival's 22 titles, and most notably the new from Dome Karukoski who lasted visited Canberra as guest of the 2013 Canberra International Film Festival. His film The Grump (Sat 18 July 6.30pm and Fri 24 July 6.30pm) sounds like a Lapland take on that great French comedy Tatie Danielle, as lauded Finnish actor Antti Litja plays a cantankerous, pernickety eighty-year-old farmer forced to move in with his son and his wife in the city.

There's more under the surface of both the grump (the Character) and The Grump (the film), as Karukoski made the film for his father and with his father in mind as the man constantly referencing the good old days, with good use of archival footage of days of Finland past.

Finnish director Samuli Valkama's No Thank You (Sat 18 July 12pm and Sun 26 July 4.30pm) might hit a little too close to the bone for some Canberrans, as the still-beautiful mid-40s Heli (Anu Sinisalo Ville) tries every trick in her arsenal to distract her husband's attention away from his laptop, to little avail and leaving her feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.

I'm intrigued by the Icelandic entry Paris of the North (Thurs 16 July 1.30pm and Sat 25 July 2.30pm) in which Bjorn Thors plays a recently-sober primary school teacher who moves to a remote town with a population of 150 to re-establish a sober and sane existence and heal the wounds of a broken marriage, until his hard-drinking father arrives to throw a spanner in his attempted Zen-like existence.

The festival closes with the 2015 Cannes Film Festival best documentary prizewinner Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words (Sat 26 July 6.30pm) from Swedish writer, director and film critic Stig Bjorkman. His portrait breaks the fabulous Swedish actress's career into its three periods – she had successive and successful careers in Sweden, Hollywood and Italy and draws from never-before-seen private footage, notes, letters, diaries and interviews with Bergman's children Pia Lindström, Isabella and Ingrid Rossellini and son Renato Rossellini.

The Scandinavian Film Festival runs from July 14-26 at Palace Electric, Canberra. See scandinavianfilmfestival.com