First pitched at Haugesund’s New Nordic Films 2017 under the title My Wife, My Replica and I, Giæver’s series Clone (Klone) won the Nordic Co-Production Market’s Best Project Award.

After the films Out of Nature and From the Balcony which premiered respectively at Toronto in 2014 and the Berlinale in 2017, the actor/writer/director continues his existential exploration, this time by staging himself in outer space-in the year 2041.

Clone tells of a married couple, Fredrik and Eva, sole humans aboard a spaceship on its way back to Earth. Unfortunately, a foreign virus is detected in Fredrik’s blood, preventing him from returning home. In desperation, he clones himself in the spaceship’s 3D printer, transforming the dual relationship with Eva into a triangle drama, both awkward and exciting. The sci-fi comedy drama produced by Maria Ekerhovd of Mer Film, was granted NOK 660,000 from the NFI’s ‘Nye veier’ or ‘New Ways’ talent development support scheme.

“The project takes both the situation comedy and web series format seriously, while adding elements from Giæver’s earlier feature films. The result is recognisable and original at the same time, just as we want ‘New Ways’ to be,” said NFI commissioner Ståle Stein Berg. Giæver said the NFI support will allow him “to create an original and unique universe, which can be both existentially thought-provoking and hysterically fun.”

Besides Clone, Mer Film received a grant of NOK 1,080,000 for Itonje Søimer Guttormsen’s debut feature Burning Man, winner of the Eurimages’ €50,000 Lab Project Award at Haugesund’s New Nordic Films 2018. Burning Man focuses on performance artist Gritt who struggles to find her place on Oslo’s cultural scene after several years abroad. As her attempt to find her place gets increasingly desperate, it opens opens for radical transformation and liberation. Guttormsen will develop the project in close collaboration with the main actress Birgitte Larsen.

The NFI’s New Ways scheme also allocated the following development grants:

  • NOK 560,000 to Jakob Rørvik’s feature film Thomas i 10 dimensioner (lit. Thomas in 10 dimensions’) produced by Maipo Film’s Āshild Ramborg and Synnøve Hørsdal. The drama comedy tells of quantum physicist Thomas who thinks he's breaking the universe's code, but his son, his ex and his mother are in the way. 
  • NOK 580,000 to the series Me Myself and I (Verden er min) by Amy Black Ndiaye produced by Monday Scripted’s Terez Hollo-Klausen. Ndiaye uses ‘rapsical’ - a mix of rap and musical- to discuss love, friendship and family. 
  • NOK 785,000 to the documentary Etter by Charlotte Røhder Tvedt, produced by Medieoperatørene. It’s a follow up of the director’s 2006 film The Interview about asylum seekers’ encounter with Norway’s immigration bureaucracy. 
  • NOK 487,576 to Daniel’s Inferno by Egil Håskjold, produced by Yellow Log, a portrait of a mining worker’s life in Svalbard.