In her welcoming speech, Nina Refseth, head of the Norwegian Film Institute praised the current Norwegian film output. “We’ve had one of our strongest film years and Norwegian film exports have increased six-fold during the last ten years.” Refseth stressed as well the increased NFI support to international co-productions (from €1.5 million to €2.1 million in 2013) and more substantial financial support to fewer but bigger international co-productions.
Matt Cowal, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Publicity at US distribution company Magnolia Pictures confirmed he had ‘strong Norwegian genre titles’ coming up, Friland Films’ Pioneer (pictured) and Fante Film’s Ragnarok. “The theatrical marketplace has become very tough in the US, especially for foreign language films, so every time there is a genre film, it allows us to play around with different distribution models. Troll Hunters for example worked very well on VOD because we could sell it based on the trailer, it was a clear genre. This might work again with Ragnarok. We approach each film differently and try what’s best suited for each one of them.”
Rikke Ennis, CEO of sales outfit TrustNordisk said the combination of strong name directors (from Joachim Trier, Erik Poppe, to Erik Skjoldbjærg), cast, clear genres and character-driven stories make it easier today to pre-sell Norwegian films and even to attract bigger MGs. She said she had seen a clear improvement in Norwegian films over recent years, with a better focus on the audience, bigger named casts in several films (which helps the international promotion of the films) and strong profiles of production companies.
Among the upcoming Norwegian films with international cast elements is Liv Ullmann’s Miss Julia, starring Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell which just wrapped its shoot last Friday. Maipo producer Synnøve Hørsdal said the interest is ‘enormous’ from buyers, so she – and sales agent Wild Bunch - will wait for the finished film to take offers.