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Sveinung Golimo • Producer

Victoria by Knut Hamsun brought to the screen

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- Sveinung Golimo produced Victoria, the latest adaptation of Knut Hamsun’s novel, starring Iben Akerlie and Bill Skarsgård

Filmkameratene is a Norwegian production company headed with great diligence by an enthusiastic tandem: John M. Jacobsen, the company’s founder, and Sveinung Golimo, whom we had the pleasure of meeting.

Cineuropa: Victoria is an adaptation of a novel by Knut Hamsun, a Norwegian author who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1920. Is this the first film inspired by the book published in 1898?
Sveinung Golimo: No, a German version of this novel already exists, filmed in 1935 in the western Norway, as well as a Swedish film directed by Bo Widerberg in 1979. There also was a Lithuanian film made in the 1980's. But this is the first time that a Norwegian film has been made from the book. John M. Jacobsen has been dreaming about it for 40 years. After a long series of negotiations, he finally bought the rights to it, which were held since the 1930's by Paul Kohner, a famous American agent. Funding the film wasn't easy: Norway mostly advanced the money.

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Does this film have a chance of finding an audience abroad?
Yes, because it is a beautiful love story with all the classic ingredients: romantic love, thwarted, naturally, various ups and downs. Let’s not forget that Victoria was written at a time when the differences between social classes were much more obvious than they are now. The film’s theme is nevertheless contemporary: family tensions still exist today, lovers too. On the other hand, from an international perspective, we have seen the recent success of drama adaptations such as Anna Karenina [+see also:
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]
and the television series Downton Abbey. They are in tune with the times. Also, for a few years now, interest in Norwegian productions has been growing. The last two films produced by Filmkameratene, Max Manus [+see also:
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and The Troll Hunter [+see also:
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interview: Andre Øvredal
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, did very well internationally.

Where does the movie take place?
Since Hamsun does not talk about it much in his novel, we chose Oslo. Torun Lian directed our Victoria. She is mostly known for her movie Only clouds move the stars, which was produced by Filmkameratene and won a Crystal Bear at the 1999 Berlin Film Festival. The novel was written by a man and we thought it would be interesting to ask a woman to direct it. Maybe the story will find a new balance...

And the actors?
Torun chose them. She entrusted the title role to Iben Akerlie, a young unknown with no cinema experience, but very credible. The young people are, however, well-known in Scandinavia: Jakob Oftebro, seen in Kon Tiki [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, and Bill Skarsgård, one of the sons of the famous Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård. The music also plays an important role: it is the result of a collaboration between four Norwegian musicians: Jan Bang, Erik Honoré, Gaute Storås, who is very experienced with film scores, and trumpet-player Arve Henriksen.

You seem to have a particular interest in Hamsun.
Yes, it so happens that one of my great-grand-aunts knew him very well when he lived in the north of Norway, in Hamarøy, around 1870. She apparently served as a model for Hamsun when he created the character of Victoria. She was the daughter of a wealthy trader in Hamarøy, who fell in love with a young man of humble origin who worked for her father. But the love story was cut short because she died when she was only 22. My grandmother still lived in Hamarøy not so long ago. So it isn’t surprising that I'm particularly attached to this family location, and to Victoria.

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