The €10 million war movie produced by Norway’s Mer Film with support from Nordisk Film & TV Fond is currently filming in Malta, before moving to Hamburg and Bergen.

Inspired by true events, War Sailor is the most ambitious film for writer/director Gunnar Vikene (Pørni, Occupied) and one the most expensive Norwegian films ever, with a budget of over NOK100 million (€10m).

The feature film centres on Alfred, a working-class newly-wed father of three in Bergen. When World War II breaks out, he and his childhood friend are at work on a merchant ship in the middle of the Atlantic. Suddenly they find themselves on the front lines, fighting in civilian clothes, without weapons, as their ship is targeted by German submarines. At the same time, we follow Alfred's wife and children back home in Bergen and their everyday lives during wartime.

Kristoffer Joner (The Wave, The Revenant) who worked with Vikene in his acclaimed debut feature Falling Sky plays the title role.

The film is produced by Mer Film’s Maria Ekerhovd, in co-production with Germany’s Rohfilm Factory, Malta’s Falkun Films, with support from the Norwegian Film Institute, Zefyr Media Fund in Norway, Western Norway Film Centre, Bergen Municipality and Creative Europe. Scandinavian Film Distribution will handle the local release, set for October 7, 2022.

According to Ekerhovd, the ensemble cast will be announced closer to the Bergen shoot in June.

War Sailor is one of two major feature films in Mer Film’s pipeline, together with Ole Giæver’s Let the River Flow, set against the historical Alta uprising of Norway’s indigenous Sami People in the late 1970s. Mer Film’s upcoming films Gritt by Itonje Søimer Guttormsen is set to premiere June 18 and The Innocents by Eskil Vogt later this summer.