Anders (34) will soon complete his drug rehabilitation in the countryside. As part of the program, he is allowed to go into the city for a job interview. But he takes advantage of the leave and stays on in the city, drifting around, meeting people he hasn't seen in a while. Anders is smart, handsome and from a good family, but deeply haunted by all the opportunities he has wasted, all the people he has let down. He is still relatively young, but feels his life in many ways is already over. For the remainder of the day and long into the night, the ghosts of past mistakes will wrestle with the chance of love, the possibility of a new life and the hope to see some future by morning.

Jury motivation: Oslo, 31 August, like director Joachim Trier’s debut, Reprise (2006), has a visible and reverential but also playful relationship to the European art-film tradition.
The film portrays a young man who, despite his good prospects, has ended up as a heroin addict. Depressed and desperate, he bumps into acquaintances and strangers alike one late summer day and gradually they help redefine his life and his story. Trier touches us with his bold visual and auditory solutions, and lets the city, filtered through the protagonist’s mind, play a central role. Anders Danielsen Lie is impressive as Anders, the figure at the centre of a pressure-cooker atmosphere made up of both people and urban environments. 

National jury: Silje Riise Næss, Kalle Løchen & Britt Sørensen