13/08/2021 - A-list festival favourites, the Amanda Awards and, at long last, A-ha – it’s all part of plan A at Norway’s biggest film gathering, which boasts a real return to form

As August 2020 saw increasing infection rates, travel restrictions and quarantine rules, the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund resorted to its plan B. Luckily, the team had a good one, adapted for digital solutions and even with a hand-picked physical audience for the national Amanda Awards ceremony (the winners, basically). This year’s edition (running from 21-27 August), the 49^th since it started in 1972, promises a real return to form. Plan A has A-list festival favourites, and myriad audience and industry attendees. Almost business as usual.

Opening with Eskil Vogt’s Cannes spine-chiller The Innocents [+see also:
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interview: Eskil Vogt
film profile] and closing with Thomas Daneskov’s Tribeca entry Wild Men [+see also:
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interview: Thomas Daneskov
film profile], the programme offers 62 features and 23 short films. Domestic presence is at record strength, with 14 Norwegian features and 15 shorts in the line-up, including six world premieres, among them Paul Tunge’s architecture documentary Mind of Modernism and Stay Home, an ambitious account of the pandemic by Maren Victoria Thingnæs and Marianne Mørk, following a group of children from eight different countries over 11 months. The Danish-Norwegian effort Margrete – Queen of the North [+see also:
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interview: Charlotte Sieling
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The Nordic Focus section offers an ample array of recent festival fare, such as Juho Kuosmanen’s Cannes Grand Prix winner Compartment No. 6 [+see also:
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interview: Juho Kuosmanen
film profile] and Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s Directors’ Fortnight discovery Clara Sola [+see also:
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interview: Nathalie Álvarez Mesén
film profile] as well as Ninja Thyberg’s porn-industry fable Pleasure [+see also:
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interview: Ninja Thyberg
film profile], Khadar Ahmed’s The Gravedigger’s Wife [+see also:
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film profile] and Christoffer Boe’s A Taste of Hunger [+see also:
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film profile]. Documentary picks include Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Oscar-mooted Flee [+see also:
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interview: Jonas Poher Rasmussen
film profile] and The Most Beautiful Boy in the World [+see also:
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interview: Kristina Lindström and Kris…
film profile], Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri’s tender portrait of Björn “Tadzio” Andrésen, who took the world by storm in Visconti’s Death in Venice in 1971. There will be international favourites aplenty, including titles like Jasmila Žbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida? [+see also:
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interview: Jasmila Žbanić
film profile], Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Man Who Sold His Skin [+see also:
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interview: Kaouther Ben Hania
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interview: Elie Grappe
film profile] by Elie Grappe as well as Julia Ducournau’s red-hot Palme d’Or winner Titane [+see also:
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interview: Julia Ducournau, Vincent Li…
film profile] as a likely pièce de résistance. A possible national contender for all this excitement may well be A-HA – The Movie [+see also:
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interview: Thomas Robsahm
film profile], directed by Thomas Robsahm and Aslaug Holm, which was 12 years in the making. The story of Norway’s greatest 1980s pop sensation, which world-premiered at Tribeca in June, is now, at long last, landing in the motherland, with a Haugesund-hosted national premiere on 23 August.

True to tradition, the festival kicks off with the Amanda Awards on 21 August, held, as always, at the Festiviteten concert hall. Leading this year’s favourites is Yngvild Sve Flikke’s dramedy Ninjababy [+see also:
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interview: Kristine Kujath Thorp
interview: Yngvild Sve Flikke
film profile], with 11 nominations, followed by Eirik Svensson’s historical World War II drama Betrayed [+see also:
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film profile], with nine nods, and Itonje Søimer Guttormsen’s radical character study Gritt [+see also:
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interview: Itonje Søimer Guttormsen
film profile], with eight. The big documentary contender is Benjamin Ree’s The Painter and the Thief [+see also:
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interview: Benjamin Ree
film profile], an international favourite and Sundance winner, which has racked up five nominations.

The full programme of the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund can be found here.