In less than two years since she took over the helm of the Norwegian Film Institute, Mo has steered Norway’s leading audiovisual body across both turbulent times - COVID 19, the streaming disruption on the market, and glorious times, with Norwegian talents’ top recognition at world festivals and the global market’s ever-increasing hunger for Norwegian talents.

Since the beginning of the year, she has overseen the Norwegian government’s Covid-19 compensation schemes, the launch of the NFI White Paper Strategy towards 2025, (CLICK HERE) and the associated restructuring of the NFI’s key departments, still undergoing.

Most recent appointments were the hiring of established producer Anders Tangen (Norsemen, One Night, Lilyhammer) as Head of the new Development and Audience Department, and former tax administration expert Randi Marie Tandle, as Head of Digitization and Operations.

Ahead of Sunday’s major Film Policy Seminar in Haugesund where she will comment among others on the NFI’s action plan for Diversity, based on a recent report,
https://www.nfi.no/aktuelt/2021/mangfold-pa-kinolerretet-2013-2020, Mo summarised for us current and future changes at the NFI.

How did you experience the Cannes film festival and how did you feel about Renate Reinsve’s historical Best Actress historical win?
Kjersti Mo: It was a totally fantastic Cannes experience from a Norwegian perspective, and Renate’s historical win has shown the whole world that Norwegian film is worth following in the years to come. We are so proud of her!

You’ve been head of the NFI for almost 2 years-you’ve arrived at a time of major transformation in the audiovisual sector, and had to face the global pandemic. How does the NFI look like today? Could you outline how you have restructured internally, and explain the newly created roles of Anders Tangen and Randi Marie Tandle?
KM: I started at the NFI a year and a half ago. I came from the publishing sector at Egmont, and had earlier worked at NRK, so I had a solid creative and media expertise. The new organisation at the NFI mirrors our new strategy towards 2025, outlined in February. Our focus in recent months has been to put full power into that strategy.

Our most recent corporate appointments of Anders Tangen as Director of Development and Audience, and Randi Marie Tandle as Director of Digitization and Operations reflect the full reorganisation of our departments and forward-looking strategy. Our two new recruits will no doubt contribute to the further development of Norwegian films, TV drama and computer games. Anders is basically in charge of talent, diversity, development, audience impact and computer games and takes on a newly created position. It won’t be just an easy task to enhance these areas, as all organisations by nature are somewhat conservative. Therefore, we felt we had to shake things up a bit to make sure we could implement changes, and that our strategic goals would be sufficiently enhanced. Then with Randi’s appointment, we will have an administration expert, who will transform the NFI into a more flexible and efficient organisation.

Meanwhile, Lars Løge will continue as Director of Production and International Department.

Could you summarise the new NFI strategy that was announced earlier this year?
KM: Prior to my appointment, the NFI had started a process of changes to our regulations, to adapt to the drastic changes in the audiovisual industry. In the following study I initiated, we searched for answers on how the transformation of the industry on a global scale, actually affects our position? How can we use public money in the most efficient way to help the industry, and remain competitive at the highest international level?

As part of our new strategy towards 2025, we are also looking into our support schemes, because we see there are severe changes ahead, both within the financing structures, the production technology, and audience’s expectations.

We will ramp up our activities to ensure that we work strategically with talents and diversity, to develop and nurture new voices, with a clear target of doubling Norwegian stories by 2025. I have to add, that this goal is not about volume alone. It is also related to impact or other values that film can be measured by.

Promoting new voices means looking into different social, gender, ethnic backgrounds. We’re confident we will achieve higher diversity, and through that both interesting stories and new talents will emerge. We will also put more money and efforts into development. This will allow us to position the projects better.

Furthermore, we know that overall public financing for productions is decreasing, so we need to create more opportunities for projects to find financing on the commercial market, by driving networking, skills development and entrepreneurial spirit. Maybe some of these projects, supported by the NFI development scheme, will be made without our production support. But that’s fine as well. Another area is research to get a better insight and in-depth knowledge of the audience’s behaviour, taste, and how to reach them.

Our overall ambition is to lift our contribution to society, by promoting cultural cohesion, public dialogue, diversity and democracy.

Basically, our strategy is spread across five areas:

  • Talent and diversity
  • Stimulating international financing
  • Cultural cohesion
  • High quality storytelling across platforms
  • Audience impact through research.

Could you detail your overall budget for development, production support, and how it is split between feature film, docs, TV dramas?
KM: In 2020 out total budget for development, production, launch in cinemas, shorts, feature length, documentaries, TV dramas and games was around NOK 539.4 million (over €52 million). The lion-share went to feature films (64%), then documentaries received around 14% of total grants, TV dramas around 11%. And short films 4%.

We’ve made our provisions for 2025 and the important thing for us is to focus on our goals, with the allocated budgets, to navigate in the direction set. Our priority going forward will be to raise our investment into development.

This fall you have 14 films lined up for theatrical release with a rich diversity of eye-catching titles, from festival favourites such as The Innocents, The Worst Person in the World, event documentaries, a-ha-The Movie, large-scale entertainment, The North Sea, Three Wishes for Cinderella, to comedies, Nothing to Laugh About. Hopefully your national market-share will climb back to decent levels…
KM: This autumn’s programme is very strong, and we do have the ambition to achieve a market-share of 30%.

We really hope the audience will do as they say in our surveys – and return to the cinemas! This ambition is also why we’re planning more money for instance into the market scheme [production support for theatrical release based on market criteria].

Some people might think we only focus on drama series, and streaming services, but that’s not correct. Our overall goal is to increase the total consumption of Norwegian audiovisual content, and to support the independent producers in these times of dramatic changes.

TV series are driving the production sector. How can the NFI play a bigger role in regulating the sector to ensure a greater diversity of quality content for the viewers and to help rights owners monetise their content across platforms?
KM: The government’s Culture Department is working on implementing the AVMS directive, and we have just sent our assessment on the future implementation. So much has happened since the regulators concluded they wanted investment obligations. Today, the NFI is suggesting a combination between levies and investment obligations, and the freedom to choose VOD platforms, but it’s really a political issue.

Distribution/exhibition have suffered dramatically during the pandemic. Again, what are the NFI’s action plan to support both areas, especially after the pandemic?
KM: We’ve measured that without government funding, cinemas would have lost up to 80% of their income. Distributors were included in the support schemes after the first 3 months. Festivals have mainly kept their support, and have kept going. Overall, our support has been quite well received.

Your filming incentive programme to lure local and foreign film crews has also been evaluated through a report commissioned to Oslo Economics in May. What will you do to improve the scheme-which seems to lack in competitiveness compared to other countries’ incentives, with a framework far below market demand?
KM: Our research has revealed that the demand is very high and our scheme is efficient; we attract both local and international productions and between 2016-2021, the scheme has granted a total reimbursement of NOK 423 million [€40.7m) to 25 productions. But we can do more of course and the budget for 2021 has already been raised to NOK 100 million. The political commitment in the incentive scheme is very high, and many politicians want an automatic scheme. So the September election will be very interesting, also in this matter.

That said, our budget definitely needs to be upped in the years to come. The interest is skyrocketing and the potential is huge. Last year, the Mission Impossible team was very pleased with our infrastructure and support. We can do a lot more.

What have you learned since you joined the NFI?
KM: It’s been a very strange year and a half, super intense and full of surprises. I’m very impressed by the production, financing, distribution sectors. The industry has been incredibly resilient, although the work flow and costs have increased by almost 50%. That makes me humble. Despite Covid and all the extra challenges, Norwegian Film, series and games are now well positioned for the years to come.