12/04/2012 - The Norwegian Film Institute chips in €7 million for six new local productions, including new features from veteran directors and two debuts

After his drama-comedy Home For Christmas [+see also:
film review
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interview: Bent Hamer
film profile] (2010), Norwegian director Bent Hamer (pictured) sends a woman scientist in her late thirties to a seminar in Paris to discuss the future of the kilogram. During her stay she falls in love with a French colleague in 1001 Grams, a €3.7 million feature written, directed and produced by Hamer for his own BulBul Film A/S, with principal photography scheduled for the autumn. 1001 Grams is one of six new local productions with budgets totalling €18.4 million, including two feature debuts, which the Norwegian Film Institute has backed by €7 million - €1 million went to Hamer’s seventh movie.

Already supported by Eurimages top finance, Erik Poppe’s A Thousand Times Good Night (aka Grenade) – his first film since Troubled Water [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2008) concluded his Oslo trilogy – also received institute funding (€1.5 million) for its €4.9 million expenditure. Inspired by his own experiences as a war photographer in the 1980s, Poppe tells the story of Rebecca, who is torn between the job she feels as a vocation and the family she loves so much. The film will shoot from June, with Liv Ullmann starring, as a Finn Gjerdrum and Stein B. Kvae production for Paradox Spillefilm.

An experienced director of television, Geir Henning Hopland will helm his first feature, Teresa and Her Eight-Minute-Older Brother, also for Paradox. Lensing from August, his own screenplay follows Teresa and her twin brother, Frode, who have always had a good relationship until they inherit their parents’ house – she wants to keep it, he wants to sell.

A co-writer of Joachim Trier’s films, Eskild Vogt will now make his own first feature, Blind, bringing together a 30-year-old woman who has recently lost her sight, a 30-year-old newly-divorced single mother, and a 40-year-old man, a loner who is into porn on the web. The result will be filming from August for Motlys AS's Sigve Endresen and Hans-Jørgen Osnes. Also on the institute’s list of grants were Rune Denstad Langlo’s follow-up to North [+see also:
film review
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interview: Rune Denstad Langlo
film profile] (2009), Chasing the Wind, which will go into production in May for Endresen and Brede Hovland at Motlys, and Bård Breien’s first feature since The _Art of Negative Thinking [+see also:
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film profile] (2006), The Downs Detective, which Friland producer Asle Vatn will start rolling in August.