Deadline reports that Netflix has announced the casting of 28 actors for the upcoming whodunnit mystery series Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole. The mystery’s plot is led by “famed anti-hero detective Harry Hole. Underneath the surface, this series is a nuanced character drama about two police officers — and supposed colleagues — operating on opposite sides of the law. Throughout the first season, Harry goes head-to-head with his long-time adversary and corrupt detective, Tom Waaler. Harry is a brilliant but tormented homicide detective who struggles with his demons. As the two navigate the blurred ethical lines of the criminal justice system, Harry must do all he can to catch a serial killer and bring Waaler to justice before it is too late.”
The series was previously reported to star Tobias Santelmann, Joel Kinnaman and Pia Tjelta. The series is now welcoming character actor Peter Stormare (Fargo) to the cast, as well as...
The series was previously reported to star Tobias Santelmann, Joel Kinnaman and Pia Tjelta. The series is now welcoming character actor Peter Stormare (Fargo) to the cast, as well as...
- 8/19/2024
- by EJ Tangonan
- JoBlo.com
Exclusive: Peter Stormare (Fargo) is among 28 new additions to the cast of Jo Nesbo’s Detective Hole, Netflix’s forthcoming crime series based on the novels from Norwegian author Jo Nesbø.
Others featuring in prominent secondary roles include Anders Baasmo (Power Play), Ellen Helinder (Exit), Simon J. Berger (Exit), Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (Westworld) and Kelly Gale (Plane). Director Anna Zackrisson (Deliver Me) has also joined the production, which as previously reported, will star Tobias Santelmann, Joel Kinnaman and Pia Tjelta.
Jo Nesbo’s Detective Hole is a whodunnit serial killer mystery led by famed anti-hero detective Harry Hole (Santelmann). Underneath the surface, this series is a nuanced character drama about two police officers — and supposed colleagues — operating on opposite sides of the law. Throughout the first season, Harry goes head-to-head with his long-time adversary and corrupt detective, Tom Waaler (Kinnaman). Harry is a brilliant but tormented homicide detective who struggles with his demons.
Others featuring in prominent secondary roles include Anders Baasmo (Power Play), Ellen Helinder (Exit), Simon J. Berger (Exit), Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (Westworld) and Kelly Gale (Plane). Director Anna Zackrisson (Deliver Me) has also joined the production, which as previously reported, will star Tobias Santelmann, Joel Kinnaman and Pia Tjelta.
Jo Nesbo’s Detective Hole is a whodunnit serial killer mystery led by famed anti-hero detective Harry Hole (Santelmann). Underneath the surface, this series is a nuanced character drama about two police officers — and supposed colleagues — operating on opposite sides of the law. Throughout the first season, Harry goes head-to-head with his long-time adversary and corrupt detective, Tom Waaler (Kinnaman). Harry is a brilliant but tormented homicide detective who struggles with his demons.
- 8/19/2024
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
The highly-anticipated standalone sequel to the 1996 disaster thriller film Twister is finally here. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith, Twisters is a disaster action thriller film and it follows the story of Kate Cooper, a former storm chaser who gets roped into chasing storms once again by her friend Javi to test a groundbreaking new tracking system. Kate soon meets the daredevil storm wrangler Tyler Owens and all of them team up to fight for their survival. Twisters stars Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, and Sasha Lane. So, if you loved the surviving thriller, disaster, and a bit of romantic element in Twisters here are some similar movies you could watch next.
Twister (Max & Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Warner Bros.
Twister is a disaster thriller film directed by Jan de Bont from a screenplay co-written by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin.
Twister (Max & Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Warner Bros.
Twister is a disaster thriller film directed by Jan de Bont from a screenplay co-written by Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin.
- 7/14/2024
- by Kulwant Singh
- Cinema Blind
Norwegian actress Pia Tjelta will lead the cast of Nina Knag’s feature debut Don’t Call Me Mama, which is in pre-production ahead of a June 2024 shoot.
REinvent International Sales is handling international sales and launching the film at Cannes, with Scanbox Entertainment holding Nordic distribution rights.
Don’t Call Me Mama follows a high school teacher who falls in love with a young asylum seeker, sparking a forbidden relationship with consequences for them both.
Kristoffer Joner, Tarek Zayat, Kathrine Thorborg Johansen also star alongside Tjelta.
Knag and Kathrine Valen Zeiner wrote the script, with Eleonore Anselme and Ingrid Skagestad...
REinvent International Sales is handling international sales and launching the film at Cannes, with Scanbox Entertainment holding Nordic distribution rights.
Don’t Call Me Mama follows a high school teacher who falls in love with a young asylum seeker, sparking a forbidden relationship with consequences for them both.
Kristoffer Joner, Tarek Zayat, Kathrine Thorborg Johansen also star alongside Tjelta.
Knag and Kathrine Valen Zeiner wrote the script, with Eleonore Anselme and Ingrid Skagestad...
- 5/19/2024
- ScreenDaily
The sixth "Mission: Impossible" film, "Fallout," has the most fun toying with its audience. The first time it does so is one of the best surprises I've ever experienced in a movie.
The set-up: Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his Impossible Mission Force (Imf) team fail to stop a terrorist group called the Apostles from stealing three plutonium cores. So, they capture nuclear physicist Nils Delbruuk (Kristoffer Joner), a member of the Apostles.
Cut to two weeks later, with Ethan and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) standing in a hospital. Delbruuk is handcuffed to a bed while the room's TV blasts CNN. Newscaster Wolf Blitzer (as himself) is reporting how the world's three holiest cities — Rome, Jerusalem, and Mecca — have been destroyed, with footage from the nuked cities included. Have our heroes really failed this badly? Delbruuk thinks so.
Delbruuk makes a bargain with the Imf; have Blitzer read the Apostles' manifesto on-air,...
The set-up: Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his Impossible Mission Force (Imf) team fail to stop a terrorist group called the Apostles from stealing three plutonium cores. So, they capture nuclear physicist Nils Delbruuk (Kristoffer Joner), a member of the Apostles.
Cut to two weeks later, with Ethan and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) standing in a hospital. Delbruuk is handcuffed to a bed while the room's TV blasts CNN. Newscaster Wolf Blitzer (as himself) is reporting how the world's three holiest cities — Rome, Jerusalem, and Mecca — have been destroyed, with footage from the nuked cities included. Have our heroes really failed this badly? Delbruuk thinks so.
Delbruuk makes a bargain with the Imf; have Blitzer read the Apostles' manifesto on-air,...
- 8/19/2023
- by Devin Meenan
- Slash Film
War Sailor (Krigsseileren) is a series set in World War II, a Norwegian production that returns to the war theme, as was done with Narvik. A great series written and directed by Gunnar Vikene starring Kristoffer Joner, Pål Sverre Hagen and Ine Marie Wilmann.
The tale of a few men who, onboard ship, suddenly find themselves facing the outbreak of World War II, on the high seas and without weapons.
If you like epic stories, ones which have strength and style and, above all, human stories of overcoming obstacles, War Sailor plunges us into this three-hour story divided into three episodes that completely immerse us in a tale which is, above all, well narrated.
As already happened in Narvik, it is a film very close to the human side rather than to the events themselves, a series that tries to get closer to the human suffering than to any political or sociological key aspects.
The tale of a few men who, onboard ship, suddenly find themselves facing the outbreak of World War II, on the high seas and without weapons.
If you like epic stories, ones which have strength and style and, above all, human stories of overcoming obstacles, War Sailor plunges us into this three-hour story divided into three episodes that completely immerse us in a tale which is, above all, well narrated.
As already happened in Narvik, it is a film very close to the human side rather than to the events themselves, a series that tries to get closer to the human suffering than to any political or sociological key aspects.
- 4/4/2023
- by Veronica Loop
- Martin Cid - TV
The brutality of war tormented the common people of Norway with the outbreak of World War II. But a major victory against Hitler was achieved when many Norwegian merchant seamen were conscripted to help the British Allies during WWII. The Norwegian drama “War Sailor,” which is now available on Netflix, depicts how the war destroyed the lives of those merchant seamen and their families.
The story of “War Sailor” revolves around a sailor, Alfred Garnes (Kristoffer Joner), and his comrade Sigbjorn (Pål Sverre Hagen) as they travel aboard a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. While Alfred and Sigbjorn struggled as unarmed citizens who had never joined the army, Alfred’s wife and three children were anxiously awaiting their return. The plight of Alfred’s family and the merchant seamen who were torpedoed at sea by the Germans became the show’s highlight. Meanwhile, when the Brits attempted...
The story of “War Sailor” revolves around a sailor, Alfred Garnes (Kristoffer Joner), and his comrade Sigbjorn (Pål Sverre Hagen) as they travel aboard a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. While Alfred and Sigbjorn struggled as unarmed citizens who had never joined the army, Alfred’s wife and three children were anxiously awaiting their return. The plight of Alfred’s family and the merchant seamen who were torpedoed at sea by the Germans became the show’s highlight. Meanwhile, when the Brits attempted...
- 4/2/2023
- by Poulami Nanda
- Film Fugitives
Norway’s Oscar© 2023 Submission for Best International Feature: ‘War Sailor’ by Gunnar VikeneThis is a saga of war but it is not a war story. We do not see the slaughter so vividly depicted in ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. The center stage is not the bonding of men under the duress of war. Instead we see a love story fold, unfold, refold and in its midst, we see the bond between the two men who love the same woman.
Surely this film will make the Oscar Shortlist and I predict the Nomination as well if not the Oscar itself.
Starring Kristoffer Joner, Pål Sverre Hagen, Ine Marie Wilmann
The story begins at a party with a loving family Alfred, Cecilia, their three children and his best friend Wally who is a professional sailor. He persuades Alfred to join him as a cook on the merchant ship. When World War II breaks out in 1939, Norway declares itself neutral. On April 9, 1940, German troops invade the country and quickly occupy Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, and Narvik. The Norwegian government rejects the German ultimatum regarding immediate capitulation and it orders its merchant ships to continue delivering goods among the Allies. The sea is the most dangerous place with its unseen torpedos and bombs. Their ships take in survivors from other wreckages including underage youths, both male and female, who must also serve with these sailors. Alfred and Wally struggle for survival in a spiral of violence and death, where at any moment German submarines may attack their valuable vessels. The war sailors have one goal: to survive — and to return home. They are the unarmed civilians on the front lines of a war they never asked to join.
Life at home under the Nazis is also difficult and Alfred’s wife Cecilia, back home in Bergen, has to raise three kids on her own not knowing if her husband is alive or dead. So many years go by as the husband and friend try to survive and the woman with her three children also try to survive.
When British aircrafts attempt to bomb the German submarine bunker in Bergen, they instead hit the primary school at Laksevåg and civilian homes at Nøstet, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. When the news reaches Alfred and Wally in Canada, they wonder if they have anything left at home to return to.
War as the most Destructive Force on Earth is felt and witnessed through a very different lens from the typical war film and packs a greater anti-war whallop than those films where the woman and children are largely ignored as if war were between male forces and women were left to pick up the pieces when it was over. War Sailor spans the years 1939 to 1972 looking at the long-term consequences of what happened during the war years.
A discussion with writer/director Gunnar Vikene and producer Maria Ekerhovd about the making of War Sailor
writer/director Gunnar Vikene
Gunnar Vikene had been thinking about the true stories of the “war sailors” ever since he first heard about them when he was a young boy. Vikene’s father used to paint houses with a man who seemed to have no fears — Vikene found out this man had survived three torpedo attacks during World War II despite never enlisting in the military.
“There were 30,000 of these Norwegian sailors in the war. And there were similar Canadian merchant fleets, and British, and America,” Vikene explains. “They’re all the unsung heroes of that war — they were caught up in it and they couldn’t decide for themselves if they wanted to enlist. Then after the war, they didn’t fit into the idea of the war hero because they had no uniform and had no guns, no medals or anything.”
Vikene explains he wanted to avoid the usual war film cliches. “Yes, we have action scenes when it’s necessary for the story, but it comes down to the human factor. It’s not about the explosion, it’s about the consequences of the explosion.”
He discovered the true story of the real Alfred, Wally and Cecilia back in the early 1990s “and I never forgot it.” He researched their stories and similar stories of the time period and the legacy of war for decades later. Vikene doesn’t call this film a biography because it is a fictionalized version of their lives — “Alfred is not here anymore to explain anything, so I consider these fictional versions of the characters. But they are based on real people,” he says. “What I can say is that every war-related incident in the film actually happened. I read everything that I have come across.”
Another devastating true story in the film is when British aircrafts trying to bomb the German submarine bunkers in Bergen accidentally bomb the primary school at Laksevåg and civilian homes at Nøstet, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. Vikene grew up knowing the story because one of his mother’s second cousins was killed that day, at only age 8, and another of her cousins survived.
What finally inspired him to make the film was a talk a few years ago with his then-12-year-old daughter, looking at images of a wounded child in Syria. He recalls, “My daughter said, ‘I’m so glad we don’t live in a country where we experience that.’ And I pointed out the window and said, ‘relatives of your grandmother were killed right over there.’ And my daughter didn’t know. It was the idea that we need to remind ourselves that we have been through it.”
The story then burst out of him onto the page. “I had been thinking about the story for so long that when I tried to just sit down and get the first draft of the script out, I finished it in a month.”
He dreamed of telling this story for decades “but I never thought I was going to be in a position where I was actually able to make it.” His longtime collaboration with Maria Ekerhovd at Mer Film made it possible, working together on their third feature (after their past collaborations Here is Harloldand Vegas).
Producer Maria Ekerhovd
At first, Ekerhovd wasn’t keen on any story related to World War II. “I gave her the script, and told her that it takes place during the war but also after the war. She called me after she read the script and said, ‘This isn’t really a war movie, so I’d love to produce it.’”
Ekerhovd knew the production would be her biggest ever. “It’s a big production and I never actually had the ambition that I would do that kind of big film, that was never a goal I had. But Gunnar came to me in 2016 with the script, and he’d already been thinking of this story for 20 years.”
She was fascinated by this story which hadn’t been told in film before: “Gunnar told me that during the Second World War, Norway had the fifth-biggest merchant fleet in the world. When the war started, the Norwegian government decided that all these normal Norwegian sailors had to sail throughout the war, and they didn’t have a choice. These ships had such an important job to get the supplies to the Allies. Their contribution to the war was never recognized. They were traumatized. The government never even paid them for the job they did during the war until the 1970s. This is a big scandal and it hasn’t been dealt with. This isn’t the kind of black-and-white story we usually see on the big screen. There is more complexity.”
Vikene adds, “All my films before were small arthouse movies, and I knew this would take more money and more resources, and Maria made it happen, she got all the right partners on board quickly.”
Ekerhovd put together the largest budget ever for Norwegian production, at 11m Euros, bringing on co-producers Rohfilm Factory, Studio Hamburg and Falkun Films.
She was excited to continue their 15-year-collaboration in new ways. The producer says, “I think it’s super important to really get to know the people you work with, in order to really know the strengths and weaknesses of each other and be open and honest and trust the process. It’s not going to be easy all the time, and we will have our ups and downs, but we can be together in all of those circumstances.”
Vikene is always impressed that Ekerhovd is brilliant both on the creative and the logistical sides of producing: “She’s a great reader and such a good analyst. And she can be compassionate about a project’s issues. She also doesn’t take no for an answer!”
Assembling the perfect cast
A trio of established Norwegian talents play the leads — Kristoffer Joner (The Wave) plays family man Alfred; Pal Sverre Hagen (Kon-Tiki) is his old friend Wally; and Ine Marie Wilmann (Sonia: The White Swan) plays Alfred’s wife Cecilia.
Vikene had made his first feature, 2002’s Falling Sky, with Joner and they have become good friends over the years. “He’s a fantastic actor and human being and I had written the script with him in mind, I was so lucky he said yes,” Vikene says.
Despite being two of the most acclaimed contemporary actors in Norway, Joner and Hagen had never met before. “It’s strange that in little Norway they hadn’t met each other. But after two minutes in the room together, I just felt that they really respected and liked each other. They became great friends during the shoot and I think you see that on screen,” the director says.
He had also worked with Wilmann before, and had a special challenge for her in this role of the wife left home in Bergen. He remembers, “I told her, ‘The trick this time was that you have to learn the local dialect.’ This is really difficult and very different from her own. I told her, ‘You have to learn it — not only learning the lines, you have to speak fluidly so we can improvise.’ And she spent a year learning it and was brilliant.”
“The process of working with the actors was very nice,” Vikene continues. “I told the actors that you need to own your characters. Because this is something that I need you to take responsibility for. And they did so in such a fantastic way.”
He also tried not to rehearse each scene too much. “We talked about the characters and scenes a lot but I do very few rehearsals. I was afraid if we rehearsed it too much they were going to drain it emotionally.”
An epic production
The film was originally scheduled to shoot in 2020 but had to pause for a year due to the pandemic. They eventually shot it during March to October 2021, in Norway, Malta and Germany, with just over 60 shooting days.
They worked with a mostly Maltese crew in Malta and again with German crews in Germany, and Vikene praises them as “great professionals,” but he was still glad to get back to the Norwegian part of the shoot “working with a lot of people I’ve worked with before, with so many people pitching in because my film family is here.”
The scale of the project was a step up for Ekerhovd. “It was super exciting…it was a new challenge that it was such a big film, you can’t just wing it. It was fun because it was learning new skills and working with new partners and seeing how that side of the business works.”
Because Vikene has also worked in big budget TV like Occupied, he found working a bigger-budget film wasn’t a shock to the system. “The process is basically the same thing as with a lower-budget film, it just involves a lot more people.”
One key collaborator was acclaimed DoP Sturla Brandth. “Sturla is one of the best cinematographers on the planet and he’s also such a great human being — that was one of the most inspiring collaborations I’ve had in my career,” the director says.
They didn’t use typical war films for visual inspiration, instead watching documentary footage from the era or even more recent documentary films like The White Helmets.
“We wanted that documentary feel when it comes to closeness to the character,” Vikene adds. The team shot digitally — and Vikene praises colourist William Kjarval for giving it “a filmic look” in the grading process.
The big set pieces were very carefully planned. “We prepared really well for all the technical sequences, so that was storyboarded in detail in advance,” Vikene explains.
And as much as possible was shot in camera, not added in post later. He adds, “I see so many films where you have 10 seconds of a CGI ship in an establishing shot. We weren’t interested in that. We only wanted the CGI to enhance what we already shot, to make the story better.”
Scenes of the ships and raft on the ocean are actually shot in the sea, not in a water tank. They thought the authenticity was worth going the extra mile. As Vikene recalls, “Sturla thought we would be able to detect the distinction where the real water ends, and maybe it would feel not quite right. The real thing is always better.”
They also didn’t just use spectacle for spectacle’s sake. “The explosions and actions are there because they have real consequences for human beings. There are a lot of very romantic films made about war and the great heroes, and we tried to stay away from that. It was a film about survival to make it home to your loved ones, not about heroism in action. I hope you can see on screen the fear and the panic in the those war scenes.”
Ekerhovd adds, “I think what Gunnar has achieved with the film is to actually give us a feeling of how it was for them to be out on the boats and also how it really played out for the families at home.”
Vikene also praises the authentic work across so many members of the crew — such as by costume designer Stefanie Bieker (“she gave it a texture that feels really believable and not like a typical costume drama”; makeup designer Jens Bartram and his team (“they nailed it for this documentary feel we were going for”) production designer Tamo Kunz. The director adds that editors Peter Brandt and Anders Albjerg Kristiansen “were so enthusiastic and brave during the process, and challenged me and the material in a great and constructive way.”
Honoring the legacy of the war sailors
Vikene hopes this film will personally touch people who still live with the legacy of the war sailors. “People remember being children and not knowing if their beloved father is coming home. I’ve spoken to so many children of those kinds of families. That’s an important part of the story. It is so much about what happens with families after the war.”
He felt the importance of the story today when the team were shooting in his hometown of Bergen. “We were shooting in places that were so close to the school that was bombed, and there are so many people in Bergen who had families impacted by that, so that felt very special. People stopped to tell us their stories. It felt so close in a way that was inspiring, we were dealing with real people’s stories and that’s a big responsibility.”
The cast and crew were away from their families for four and a half months while making the film, and while that’s not as extreme as the story of the sailors — Vikene wanted the cast and crew to draw on that feeling. He told them, “Take this emotion that you come home to your children and they have grown five centimeters since last time you saw them. And then multiply that emotion by a million. That’s how they felt.”
Sadly, this kind of war story still feels relevant today. “This story about the civilians, the working-class perspective hasn’t been told,” Vikene says. “90% of people dying in war today are civilians. They aren’t wearing uniforms. You just have to look at Ukraine.”
He continues, “I haven’t lived through war. If you live long enough, you have things in your life that you cannot fix for ourselves. Things that we can’t control and has sent our life in a different direction. I hope everyone can relate to that feeling. I hope we can all relate to having a father that you don’t know if you will ever see again, or relate to being a wife who doesn’t know if her husband is alive when she wakes up in the morning. I think on a basic human level, people can relate to that. I hope the audience can identify with the characters, there is something universal about the feelings they have towards each other.”
The Crew
Gunnar Vikene — The Director
Gunnar Vikene directed his first feature film, Falling Sky (Himmelfall) in 2002. His following feature films — Trigger(2007), Vegas (2009), and Here is Harold (2014) — have all received both critical acclaim and a number of international prizes.
In 2017 he directed the TV-series Borderline, which earned him a best director-prize at Gullruten (Norwegian Emmys). He also directed several episodes of the acclaimed show Occupied (2020) and was in 2022 again nominated for a best director-prize for his work in the TV-series Pørni (2021).
Gunnar lives in Bergen, on the west coast of Norway. Before starting to work with films he was a submarine officer for several years.
Sturla Brandth GRØVLEN — Director Of Photography
Sturla Brandth Grøvlen is a Norwegian cinematographer based in Denmark. He won the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution for his work on Victoria (2015) and has since worked on films such as Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, Eskil Vogt’s The Innocents, Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy and Josephine Decker’s Shirley.
Volker Bertelmann — Composer
Volker Bertelmann is a German composer. He won an Oscar for his work on Lion (2016), together with Dustin O’Halloran. He has composed scores for such films as Ammonite (2020), The Old Guard (2020) and All Quiet On The Western Front (2022).
The Main Cast
Kristoffer Joner — Alfred
Kristoffer Joner has starred in Norwegian and International films as The Wave, The Quake, Mission: Impossible — Fallout and The Revenant. He has won the Norwegian Film Award Amanda for Best Male Actor three times and starred in Gunnar Vikene’s first feature film Falling Sky in 2002.
Ine Marie Wilmann — Cecilia
Ine Marie Wilmann has starred in Norwegian films and TV-series as Sonja: The White Swan (Sundance 2018), Homesick (Sundance 2015), Exit (2021-) and Furia (2021-). She has won the Amanda Award for Best Female Lead and the Norwegian Emmy for her work in the TV-series The Third Eye, directed by Gunnar Vikene.
PÅL Sverre Hagen — SIGBJØRN
Pål Sverre Hagen has starred in Norwegian films such as Kon-Tiki, Troubled Water, Amundsen and Out Stealing Horses. He has won the Amanda Award for Best Actor two times — most recently for his performance in The Middle Man(Toronto, 2021).
International Sales Agent Beta Films has licensed the film to
Norway, Germany, Malta 2022
Length 151 min
Screen Ratio 1:1.85
Format Digital 3.2K
Sound 7.1 Dolby Digital
Languages Norwegian, English, German...
Surely this film will make the Oscar Shortlist and I predict the Nomination as well if not the Oscar itself.
Starring Kristoffer Joner, Pål Sverre Hagen, Ine Marie Wilmann
The story begins at a party with a loving family Alfred, Cecilia, their three children and his best friend Wally who is a professional sailor. He persuades Alfred to join him as a cook on the merchant ship. When World War II breaks out in 1939, Norway declares itself neutral. On April 9, 1940, German troops invade the country and quickly occupy Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, and Narvik. The Norwegian government rejects the German ultimatum regarding immediate capitulation and it orders its merchant ships to continue delivering goods among the Allies. The sea is the most dangerous place with its unseen torpedos and bombs. Their ships take in survivors from other wreckages including underage youths, both male and female, who must also serve with these sailors. Alfred and Wally struggle for survival in a spiral of violence and death, where at any moment German submarines may attack their valuable vessels. The war sailors have one goal: to survive — and to return home. They are the unarmed civilians on the front lines of a war they never asked to join.
Life at home under the Nazis is also difficult and Alfred’s wife Cecilia, back home in Bergen, has to raise three kids on her own not knowing if her husband is alive or dead. So many years go by as the husband and friend try to survive and the woman with her three children also try to survive.
When British aircrafts attempt to bomb the German submarine bunker in Bergen, they instead hit the primary school at Laksevåg and civilian homes at Nøstet, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. When the news reaches Alfred and Wally in Canada, they wonder if they have anything left at home to return to.
War as the most Destructive Force on Earth is felt and witnessed through a very different lens from the typical war film and packs a greater anti-war whallop than those films where the woman and children are largely ignored as if war were between male forces and women were left to pick up the pieces when it was over. War Sailor spans the years 1939 to 1972 looking at the long-term consequences of what happened during the war years.
A discussion with writer/director Gunnar Vikene and producer Maria Ekerhovd about the making of War Sailor
writer/director Gunnar Vikene
Gunnar Vikene had been thinking about the true stories of the “war sailors” ever since he first heard about them when he was a young boy. Vikene’s father used to paint houses with a man who seemed to have no fears — Vikene found out this man had survived three torpedo attacks during World War II despite never enlisting in the military.
“There were 30,000 of these Norwegian sailors in the war. And there were similar Canadian merchant fleets, and British, and America,” Vikene explains. “They’re all the unsung heroes of that war — they were caught up in it and they couldn’t decide for themselves if they wanted to enlist. Then after the war, they didn’t fit into the idea of the war hero because they had no uniform and had no guns, no medals or anything.”
Vikene explains he wanted to avoid the usual war film cliches. “Yes, we have action scenes when it’s necessary for the story, but it comes down to the human factor. It’s not about the explosion, it’s about the consequences of the explosion.”
He discovered the true story of the real Alfred, Wally and Cecilia back in the early 1990s “and I never forgot it.” He researched their stories and similar stories of the time period and the legacy of war for decades later. Vikene doesn’t call this film a biography because it is a fictionalized version of their lives — “Alfred is not here anymore to explain anything, so I consider these fictional versions of the characters. But they are based on real people,” he says. “What I can say is that every war-related incident in the film actually happened. I read everything that I have come across.”
Another devastating true story in the film is when British aircrafts trying to bomb the German submarine bunkers in Bergen accidentally bomb the primary school at Laksevåg and civilian homes at Nøstet, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. Vikene grew up knowing the story because one of his mother’s second cousins was killed that day, at only age 8, and another of her cousins survived.
What finally inspired him to make the film was a talk a few years ago with his then-12-year-old daughter, looking at images of a wounded child in Syria. He recalls, “My daughter said, ‘I’m so glad we don’t live in a country where we experience that.’ And I pointed out the window and said, ‘relatives of your grandmother were killed right over there.’ And my daughter didn’t know. It was the idea that we need to remind ourselves that we have been through it.”
The story then burst out of him onto the page. “I had been thinking about the story for so long that when I tried to just sit down and get the first draft of the script out, I finished it in a month.”
He dreamed of telling this story for decades “but I never thought I was going to be in a position where I was actually able to make it.” His longtime collaboration with Maria Ekerhovd at Mer Film made it possible, working together on their third feature (after their past collaborations Here is Harloldand Vegas).
Producer Maria Ekerhovd
At first, Ekerhovd wasn’t keen on any story related to World War II. “I gave her the script, and told her that it takes place during the war but also after the war. She called me after she read the script and said, ‘This isn’t really a war movie, so I’d love to produce it.’”
Ekerhovd knew the production would be her biggest ever. “It’s a big production and I never actually had the ambition that I would do that kind of big film, that was never a goal I had. But Gunnar came to me in 2016 with the script, and he’d already been thinking of this story for 20 years.”
She was fascinated by this story which hadn’t been told in film before: “Gunnar told me that during the Second World War, Norway had the fifth-biggest merchant fleet in the world. When the war started, the Norwegian government decided that all these normal Norwegian sailors had to sail throughout the war, and they didn’t have a choice. These ships had such an important job to get the supplies to the Allies. Their contribution to the war was never recognized. They were traumatized. The government never even paid them for the job they did during the war until the 1970s. This is a big scandal and it hasn’t been dealt with. This isn’t the kind of black-and-white story we usually see on the big screen. There is more complexity.”
Vikene adds, “All my films before were small arthouse movies, and I knew this would take more money and more resources, and Maria made it happen, she got all the right partners on board quickly.”
Ekerhovd put together the largest budget ever for Norwegian production, at 11m Euros, bringing on co-producers Rohfilm Factory, Studio Hamburg and Falkun Films.
She was excited to continue their 15-year-collaboration in new ways. The producer says, “I think it’s super important to really get to know the people you work with, in order to really know the strengths and weaknesses of each other and be open and honest and trust the process. It’s not going to be easy all the time, and we will have our ups and downs, but we can be together in all of those circumstances.”
Vikene is always impressed that Ekerhovd is brilliant both on the creative and the logistical sides of producing: “She’s a great reader and such a good analyst. And she can be compassionate about a project’s issues. She also doesn’t take no for an answer!”
Assembling the perfect cast
A trio of established Norwegian talents play the leads — Kristoffer Joner (The Wave) plays family man Alfred; Pal Sverre Hagen (Kon-Tiki) is his old friend Wally; and Ine Marie Wilmann (Sonia: The White Swan) plays Alfred’s wife Cecilia.
Vikene had made his first feature, 2002’s Falling Sky, with Joner and they have become good friends over the years. “He’s a fantastic actor and human being and I had written the script with him in mind, I was so lucky he said yes,” Vikene says.
Despite being two of the most acclaimed contemporary actors in Norway, Joner and Hagen had never met before. “It’s strange that in little Norway they hadn’t met each other. But after two minutes in the room together, I just felt that they really respected and liked each other. They became great friends during the shoot and I think you see that on screen,” the director says.
He had also worked with Wilmann before, and had a special challenge for her in this role of the wife left home in Bergen. He remembers, “I told her, ‘The trick this time was that you have to learn the local dialect.’ This is really difficult and very different from her own. I told her, ‘You have to learn it — not only learning the lines, you have to speak fluidly so we can improvise.’ And she spent a year learning it and was brilliant.”
“The process of working with the actors was very nice,” Vikene continues. “I told the actors that you need to own your characters. Because this is something that I need you to take responsibility for. And they did so in such a fantastic way.”
He also tried not to rehearse each scene too much. “We talked about the characters and scenes a lot but I do very few rehearsals. I was afraid if we rehearsed it too much they were going to drain it emotionally.”
An epic production
The film was originally scheduled to shoot in 2020 but had to pause for a year due to the pandemic. They eventually shot it during March to October 2021, in Norway, Malta and Germany, with just over 60 shooting days.
They worked with a mostly Maltese crew in Malta and again with German crews in Germany, and Vikene praises them as “great professionals,” but he was still glad to get back to the Norwegian part of the shoot “working with a lot of people I’ve worked with before, with so many people pitching in because my film family is here.”
The scale of the project was a step up for Ekerhovd. “It was super exciting…it was a new challenge that it was such a big film, you can’t just wing it. It was fun because it was learning new skills and working with new partners and seeing how that side of the business works.”
Because Vikene has also worked in big budget TV like Occupied, he found working a bigger-budget film wasn’t a shock to the system. “The process is basically the same thing as with a lower-budget film, it just involves a lot more people.”
One key collaborator was acclaimed DoP Sturla Brandth. “Sturla is one of the best cinematographers on the planet and he’s also such a great human being — that was one of the most inspiring collaborations I’ve had in my career,” the director says.
They didn’t use typical war films for visual inspiration, instead watching documentary footage from the era or even more recent documentary films like The White Helmets.
“We wanted that documentary feel when it comes to closeness to the character,” Vikene adds. The team shot digitally — and Vikene praises colourist William Kjarval for giving it “a filmic look” in the grading process.
The big set pieces were very carefully planned. “We prepared really well for all the technical sequences, so that was storyboarded in detail in advance,” Vikene explains.
And as much as possible was shot in camera, not added in post later. He adds, “I see so many films where you have 10 seconds of a CGI ship in an establishing shot. We weren’t interested in that. We only wanted the CGI to enhance what we already shot, to make the story better.”
Scenes of the ships and raft on the ocean are actually shot in the sea, not in a water tank. They thought the authenticity was worth going the extra mile. As Vikene recalls, “Sturla thought we would be able to detect the distinction where the real water ends, and maybe it would feel not quite right. The real thing is always better.”
They also didn’t just use spectacle for spectacle’s sake. “The explosions and actions are there because they have real consequences for human beings. There are a lot of very romantic films made about war and the great heroes, and we tried to stay away from that. It was a film about survival to make it home to your loved ones, not about heroism in action. I hope you can see on screen the fear and the panic in the those war scenes.”
Ekerhovd adds, “I think what Gunnar has achieved with the film is to actually give us a feeling of how it was for them to be out on the boats and also how it really played out for the families at home.”
Vikene also praises the authentic work across so many members of the crew — such as by costume designer Stefanie Bieker (“she gave it a texture that feels really believable and not like a typical costume drama”; makeup designer Jens Bartram and his team (“they nailed it for this documentary feel we were going for”) production designer Tamo Kunz. The director adds that editors Peter Brandt and Anders Albjerg Kristiansen “were so enthusiastic and brave during the process, and challenged me and the material in a great and constructive way.”
Honoring the legacy of the war sailors
Vikene hopes this film will personally touch people who still live with the legacy of the war sailors. “People remember being children and not knowing if their beloved father is coming home. I’ve spoken to so many children of those kinds of families. That’s an important part of the story. It is so much about what happens with families after the war.”
He felt the importance of the story today when the team were shooting in his hometown of Bergen. “We were shooting in places that were so close to the school that was bombed, and there are so many people in Bergen who had families impacted by that, so that felt very special. People stopped to tell us their stories. It felt so close in a way that was inspiring, we were dealing with real people’s stories and that’s a big responsibility.”
The cast and crew were away from their families for four and a half months while making the film, and while that’s not as extreme as the story of the sailors — Vikene wanted the cast and crew to draw on that feeling. He told them, “Take this emotion that you come home to your children and they have grown five centimeters since last time you saw them. And then multiply that emotion by a million. That’s how they felt.”
Sadly, this kind of war story still feels relevant today. “This story about the civilians, the working-class perspective hasn’t been told,” Vikene says. “90% of people dying in war today are civilians. They aren’t wearing uniforms. You just have to look at Ukraine.”
He continues, “I haven’t lived through war. If you live long enough, you have things in your life that you cannot fix for ourselves. Things that we can’t control and has sent our life in a different direction. I hope everyone can relate to that feeling. I hope we can all relate to having a father that you don’t know if you will ever see again, or relate to being a wife who doesn’t know if her husband is alive when she wakes up in the morning. I think on a basic human level, people can relate to that. I hope the audience can identify with the characters, there is something universal about the feelings they have towards each other.”
The Crew
Gunnar Vikene — The Director
Gunnar Vikene directed his first feature film, Falling Sky (Himmelfall) in 2002. His following feature films — Trigger(2007), Vegas (2009), and Here is Harold (2014) — have all received both critical acclaim and a number of international prizes.
In 2017 he directed the TV-series Borderline, which earned him a best director-prize at Gullruten (Norwegian Emmys). He also directed several episodes of the acclaimed show Occupied (2020) and was in 2022 again nominated for a best director-prize for his work in the TV-series Pørni (2021).
Gunnar lives in Bergen, on the west coast of Norway. Before starting to work with films he was a submarine officer for several years.
Sturla Brandth GRØVLEN — Director Of Photography
Sturla Brandth Grøvlen is a Norwegian cinematographer based in Denmark. He won the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution for his work on Victoria (2015) and has since worked on films such as Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, Eskil Vogt’s The Innocents, Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy and Josephine Decker’s Shirley.
Volker Bertelmann — Composer
Volker Bertelmann is a German composer. He won an Oscar for his work on Lion (2016), together with Dustin O’Halloran. He has composed scores for such films as Ammonite (2020), The Old Guard (2020) and All Quiet On The Western Front (2022).
The Main Cast
Kristoffer Joner — Alfred
Kristoffer Joner has starred in Norwegian and International films as The Wave, The Quake, Mission: Impossible — Fallout and The Revenant. He has won the Norwegian Film Award Amanda for Best Male Actor three times and starred in Gunnar Vikene’s first feature film Falling Sky in 2002.
Ine Marie Wilmann — Cecilia
Ine Marie Wilmann has starred in Norwegian films and TV-series as Sonja: The White Swan (Sundance 2018), Homesick (Sundance 2015), Exit (2021-) and Furia (2021-). She has won the Amanda Award for Best Female Lead and the Norwegian Emmy for her work in the TV-series The Third Eye, directed by Gunnar Vikene.
PÅL Sverre Hagen — SIGBJØRN
Pål Sverre Hagen has starred in Norwegian films such as Kon-Tiki, Troubled Water, Amundsen and Out Stealing Horses. He has won the Amanda Award for Best Actor two times — most recently for his performance in The Middle Man(Toronto, 2021).
International Sales Agent Beta Films has licensed the film to
Norway, Germany, Malta 2022
Length 151 min
Screen Ratio 1:1.85
Format Digital 3.2K
Sound 7.1 Dolby Digital
Languages Norwegian, English, German...
- 12/20/2022
- by Sydney
- Sydney's Buzz
From Bergen to Malta, Liverpool, New York and Halifax: Norwegian merchant seamen Alfred (Kristoffer Joner) and Sigbjorn (Pal Sverre Hagen) sometimes seem to be competing for screen time with datelines in Gunnar Vikene’s epic War Sailor, Norway’s Oscar submission. Sprawling, packed with anecdote and surging from one dramatic peak to the next, War Sailor sets out to tell the stories of the ordinary but unsung heroes who helped defeat Germany in 1945. It has the best of intentions.
Perhaps if it had focused on fewer of those horror stories and cut that plot in half, it might not have also felt quite so much like a whistle-stop tour. As it is, director Gunnar Vikene takes us speeding through death, injuries and emotional trauma, the difficulties of post-war peace and onward to the farthest reaches of post-war Ptsd, three decades later. As a conscientious guide, he is determined we won’t miss a thing.
Perhaps if it had focused on fewer of those horror stories and cut that plot in half, it might not have also felt quite so much like a whistle-stop tour. As it is, director Gunnar Vikene takes us speeding through death, injuries and emotional trauma, the difficulties of post-war peace and onward to the farthest reaches of post-war Ptsd, three decades later. As a conscientious guide, he is determined we won’t miss a thing.
- 12/18/2022
- by Stephanie Bunbury
- Deadline Film + TV
A version of this story about “War Sailor” first ran in the International Film issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
“War Sailor,” the most expensive Norwegian film ever made with a budget of 11 million, traces the story of Norway’s involvement in World War II through the eyes of a sailor (Kristoffer Joner) who is drafted into joining the Allied war effort and shattered by his experience at sea.
Writer-director Gunnar Vikene, 56, drew upon stories that he heard as a child among his parents’ generation. The result is a war film that’s both epic and intimate, detailing the horrors of war and its long-term consequences — subjects that Gunner discussed during a conversation with TheWrap. The movie is Norway’s official selection for the Best International Feature Film Oscar.
Why was this an important part of history for you to tell on screen?
The story of the Norwegian sailors, as far as I know,...
“War Sailor,” the most expensive Norwegian film ever made with a budget of 11 million, traces the story of Norway’s involvement in World War II through the eyes of a sailor (Kristoffer Joner) who is drafted into joining the Allied war effort and shattered by his experience at sea.
Writer-director Gunnar Vikene, 56, drew upon stories that he heard as a child among his parents’ generation. The result is a war film that’s both epic and intimate, detailing the horrors of war and its long-term consequences — subjects that Gunner discussed during a conversation with TheWrap. The movie is Norway’s official selection for the Best International Feature Film Oscar.
Why was this an important part of history for you to tell on screen?
The story of the Norwegian sailors, as far as I know,...
- 12/9/2022
- by Joe McGovern
- The Wrap
Gunnar Vikene’s War Sailor tells the forgotten story of the 30,000 Norwegian civilian sailors who were conscripted at the beginning of World War II to serve on convoys keeping Allied supply chains open.
Conditions were treacherous with a high risk of being torpedoed by German U-boats or attacked from the air. When ships went down, it was too dangerous for other vessels to stop or turn back to pluck sailors from the water, a fact that would haunt survivors.
Related: The Contenders International – Deadline’s Full Coverage
Spanning the years 1939-72 and drawing on true stories, the drama follows the fate of friends and civilian sailors Alfred and Sigbjørn as they face endless perils at sea, buffeted by a war in which they are not playing a combat role.
Back home in Bergen, Alfred’s wife struggles to survive with their three children as the port becomes a target for British bombing raids,...
Conditions were treacherous with a high risk of being torpedoed by German U-boats or attacked from the air. When ships went down, it was too dangerous for other vessels to stop or turn back to pluck sailors from the water, a fact that would haunt survivors.
Related: The Contenders International – Deadline’s Full Coverage
Spanning the years 1939-72 and drawing on true stories, the drama follows the fate of friends and civilian sailors Alfred and Sigbjørn as they face endless perils at sea, buffeted by a war in which they are not playing a combat role.
Back home in Bergen, Alfred’s wife struggles to survive with their three children as the port becomes a target for British bombing raids,...
- 12/3/2022
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Click here to read the full article.
Winston Churchill acknowledged that the 30,000 Norwegian merchant sailors signed up by their government to aid England and the Allies during World War II were instrumental in the victory against Hitler. But the story of these men and women, who never enlisted in the armed forces, remains a footnote, generally overshadowed by accounts of more traditional military heroes. Writer-director Gunnar Vikene pays stirring tribute to them in War Sailor (Krigsseileren), an impressively crafted chronicle of male friendship, courage and trauma that folds together intense action and intimate psychological observation with a moving portrait of the enduring after-effects on one family.
Norway’s Oscar submission in the best international feature race doesn’t have the Netflix visibility or classic source material of Germany’s war-themed entry, All Quiet on the Western Front. But this is an experience both visceral and emotional, distinguished by well-drawn characters...
Winston Churchill acknowledged that the 30,000 Norwegian merchant sailors signed up by their government to aid England and the Allies during World War II were instrumental in the victory against Hitler. But the story of these men and women, who never enlisted in the armed forces, remains a footnote, generally overshadowed by accounts of more traditional military heroes. Writer-director Gunnar Vikene pays stirring tribute to them in War Sailor (Krigsseileren), an impressively crafted chronicle of male friendship, courage and trauma that folds together intense action and intimate psychological observation with a moving portrait of the enduring after-effects on one family.
Norway’s Oscar submission in the best international feature race doesn’t have the Netflix visibility or classic source material of Germany’s war-themed entry, All Quiet on the Western Front. But this is an experience both visceral and emotional, distinguished by well-drawn characters...
- 11/18/2022
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Release
Maureen Duffy‘s 1966 book “The Microcosm” has been adapted as a film featuring two-time Oscar winner Glenda Jackson. In 1966 London, when homosexuality was still criminalized, The Gateways club in Chelsea offered a haven for women to dance, express themselves and love who they want. In the book, based on her own experience, Duffy examined if this gay bar, and those like it, really offered the freedom its patrons crave. In the film, Jackson, along with director Joe Ingham, draw parallels between the past and the present and explore the uncomfortable paradox that exists within queer spaces.
The Cheerio production featuring an original score by Helen Noir and animation by Rebecca L. Weil, opens at museum of British LGBTQ history, Queer Britain, London, on Oct. 12.
Duffy said: “The film is awesome. I am amazed I wrote these words all those years ago. I hope they still have a resonance today.
Maureen Duffy‘s 1966 book “The Microcosm” has been adapted as a film featuring two-time Oscar winner Glenda Jackson. In 1966 London, when homosexuality was still criminalized, The Gateways club in Chelsea offered a haven for women to dance, express themselves and love who they want. In the book, based on her own experience, Duffy examined if this gay bar, and those like it, really offered the freedom its patrons crave. In the film, Jackson, along with director Joe Ingham, draw parallels between the past and the present and explore the uncomfortable paradox that exists within queer spaces.
The Cheerio production featuring an original score by Helen Noir and animation by Rebecca L. Weil, opens at museum of British LGBTQ history, Queer Britain, London, on Oct. 12.
Duffy said: “The film is awesome. I am amazed I wrote these words all those years ago. I hope they still have a resonance today.
- 10/7/2022
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
War Sailor TIFF Contemporary World Cinema Section Reviewed for Shockya.com by Abe Friedtanzer Director: Gunnar Vikene Writer: Gunnar Vikene Cast: Kristoffer Joner, Pål Sverre Hagen, Ine Marie Wilmann Screened at: Critics’ link, NY, 9/20/22 Opens: September 9th, 2022 (Toronto International Film Festival) There are many facets to war, and one person’s experience of living through […]
The post TIFF 2022: War Sailor Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post TIFF 2022: War Sailor Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 9/23/2022
- by Abe Friedtanzer
- ShockYa
Co-Production Market’s best project award goes to ‘The Love Pill’ from Sweden.
Gunnar Vikene’s War Sailor has won the audience award at the 50th Norwegian International Film Festival Haugesund.
Inspired by a true story, War Sailor follows two Norwegian civilian merchant sailors who find themselves thrust into danger when World War II breaks out; it also explores the legacy of war on their lives decades later.
War Sailor, which opened the festival, will have its international premiere in Toronto’s Contemporary World Cinema section. Beta Cinema handles sales and Maria Ekerhovd produces for Mer Film. The cast features Kristoffer Joner,...
Gunnar Vikene’s War Sailor has won the audience award at the 50th Norwegian International Film Festival Haugesund.
Inspired by a true story, War Sailor follows two Norwegian civilian merchant sailors who find themselves thrust into danger when World War II breaks out; it also explores the legacy of war on their lives decades later.
War Sailor, which opened the festival, will have its international premiere in Toronto’s Contemporary World Cinema section. Beta Cinema handles sales and Maria Ekerhovd produces for Mer Film. The cast features Kristoffer Joner,...
- 8/26/2022
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
For its 50th edition unspooling Aug. 20-26, Norway’s top film event, the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund, will be treating its 400-plus international guests and local audiences with a beefed-up onsite program of 72 feature length films and 19 shorts.
“We’ve had more films to choose from than ever before, “says festival honcho Tonje Hardersen about her non-competitive program, put together in close collaboration with local distributors and exhibitors. “We can still see the post-covid effects on distribution as many titles were delayed. We have therefore slightly older films – from 2020 up to 2022 – which is unusual. But this makes for an exceptional program, hopefully for all tastes,” she adds.
World premieres take in the blockbuster Norwegian opener ‘War Sailor’ by Gunnar Vikene starring Kristoffer Joner (‘The Revenant’), Pål Sverre Hagen (‘Kon-Tiki’), and Ine Marie Wilmann (‘Homesick’), about Norwegian war sailors’ heroic efforts during WWII. Prolific outfit Mer Film (‘The Innocents’) is producing,...
“We’ve had more films to choose from than ever before, “says festival honcho Tonje Hardersen about her non-competitive program, put together in close collaboration with local distributors and exhibitors. “We can still see the post-covid effects on distribution as many titles were delayed. We have therefore slightly older films – from 2020 up to 2022 – which is unusual. But this makes for an exceptional program, hopefully for all tastes,” she adds.
World premieres take in the blockbuster Norwegian opener ‘War Sailor’ by Gunnar Vikene starring Kristoffer Joner (‘The Revenant’), Pål Sverre Hagen (‘Kon-Tiki’), and Ine Marie Wilmann (‘Homesick’), about Norwegian war sailors’ heroic efforts during WWII. Prolific outfit Mer Film (‘The Innocents’) is producing,...
- 8/5/2022
- by Annika Pham
- Variety Film + TV
Norwegian disaster movies The Wave and The Quake marked out an interesting middle ground in the genre. They eschewed the tiny, insular, approach of something like Right At Your Door, but didn’t quite have the budget to compete with the vast scale of the likes of Roland Emmerich’s CGI choked productions, but they turned their limitations very much to their advantage. Where Emmerich and others in Hollywood tend to favour spectacle over emotion, these films leaned in to character, and deployed their limited but high quality effects to make us feel the peril and therefore identify with the well drawn characters.
The Burning Sea, to my slight disappointment, doesn’t follow Kristoffer Joner’s character into yet another disaster, as if he were John McClane but it was nature, rather than terrorists, repeatedly trying to kill him. Instead, the film focuses on Sofia (Kristine Kujath Thorp), a robot...
The Burning Sea, to my slight disappointment, doesn’t follow Kristoffer Joner’s character into yet another disaster, as if he were John McClane but it was nature, rather than terrorists, repeatedly trying to kill him. Instead, the film focuses on Sofia (Kristine Kujath Thorp), a robot...
- 5/18/2022
- by Sam Inglis
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Variety has been given exclusive access to the first teaser for Norwegian drama “War Sailor,” which follows two Norwegian sailors whose merchant ship is attacked by German submarines at the outbreak of World War II. Beta Cinema will be selling the film at the Cannes Market.
The film centers on Alfred Garnes, a working-class sailor, who has recently become the father of a third child, and his childhood friend Sigbjørn Kvalen, known as Wally. The men are working on a merchant ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean when World War II breaks out. The two men struggle for survival in a spiral of violence and death, where at any moment German submarines may attack their vessel.
Meanwhile, Alfred’s wife Cecilia struggles through the war alone in Bergen. When British aircrafts attempt to bomb the German submarine bunker in Bergen, they instead hit the elementary school at Laksevåg and civilian homes at Nøstet,...
The film centers on Alfred Garnes, a working-class sailor, who has recently become the father of a third child, and his childhood friend Sigbjørn Kvalen, known as Wally. The men are working on a merchant ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean when World War II breaks out. The two men struggle for survival in a spiral of violence and death, where at any moment German submarines may attack their vessel.
Meanwhile, Alfred’s wife Cecilia struggles through the war alone in Bergen. When British aircrafts attempt to bomb the German submarine bunker in Bergen, they instead hit the elementary school at Laksevåg and civilian homes at Nøstet,...
- 5/10/2022
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Lagardere Studios Distribution has boarded “The Machinery,” an action-packed thriller series headlined by Kristoffer Joner (“The Revenant”), which was teased by Viaplay during a presentation at Goteborg’s TV Drama Vision conference on Thursday.
Set at the border between Sweden and Norway, the show follows Olle Hultén, an ordinary dad who wakes up on a ferry at the border of Strömstad and Sandefjord after a late night in possession of a bag full of cash, a gun and a robbery mask. Hunted by the police, he sets off on a journey to prove his innocence.
The show will premiere on Viaplay, the streaming service operated by Nent Group. Headed by industry veteran Emmanuelle Bouilhaguet, Lagardere Studios Distribution is set to represent “The Machinery” in international markets.
Joner stars in the show opposite Julia Schacht (“Melk”), Emilia Roosmann (“Fartblinda”), Hanna Alström (“Kingsman”), Anastasios Soulis (“Gåsmamman”), Emil Almén (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo...
Set at the border between Sweden and Norway, the show follows Olle Hultén, an ordinary dad who wakes up on a ferry at the border of Strömstad and Sandefjord after a late night in possession of a bag full of cash, a gun and a robbery mask. Hunted by the police, he sets off on a journey to prove his innocence.
The show will premiere on Viaplay, the streaming service operated by Nent Group. Headed by industry veteran Emmanuelle Bouilhaguet, Lagardere Studios Distribution is set to represent “The Machinery” in international markets.
Joner stars in the show opposite Julia Schacht (“Melk”), Emilia Roosmann (“Fartblinda”), Hanna Alström (“Kingsman”), Anastasios Soulis (“Gåsmamman”), Emil Almén (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo...
- 1/30/2020
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Swedish Dicks backer Nordic Entertainment Group has refocused its studio division to focus on scripted drama and is to sell its non-scripted units.
The company, which has been ramping up its drama titles with projects including Perfect People from Shades of Blue creator Adi Hasak, and The Professionals, a Brendan Fraser-fronted remake of action movie Soldiers of Fortune, is also looking for a minority equity partner to help finance its scripted moves.
The company, which operates Scandinavian streamer Viaplay, is reorganizing its content production and distribution business that comprises 32 companies in 17 countries into a new organization focused on scripted drama production and distribution.
As part of the move, it will divest its non-scripted production, branded entertainment and events businesses.
Last year, Viaplay premiered 21 original productions, expects to premiere more than 30 original productions in 2020, and plans a minimum of 40 original productions per year in the future.
The new scripted production...
The company, which has been ramping up its drama titles with projects including Perfect People from Shades of Blue creator Adi Hasak, and The Professionals, a Brendan Fraser-fronted remake of action movie Soldiers of Fortune, is also looking for a minority equity partner to help finance its scripted moves.
The company, which operates Scandinavian streamer Viaplay, is reorganizing its content production and distribution business that comprises 32 companies in 17 countries into a new organization focused on scripted drama production and distribution.
As part of the move, it will divest its non-scripted production, branded entertainment and events businesses.
Last year, Viaplay premiered 21 original productions, expects to premiere more than 30 original productions in 2020, and plans a minimum of 40 original productions per year in the future.
The new scripted production...
- 1/29/2020
- by Peter White
- Deadline Film + TV
Nordic Entertainment Group (Nent), the company behind growing Scandinavian Svod service Viaplay, is planning to launch a U.S. division following its investment in Erik Feig’s Picturestart.
This comes after the company unveiled a major management restructure across its business.
Nent Studios Us is being established following Nent Group’s strategic investment in Feig’s production and financing vehicle Picturestart in May. It is in the process of hiring a CEO. Nent was one of the initial backers of the venture alongside Warner Bros, Scholastic and Endeavor Content.
Nent has been attracting international attention for its raft of originals with Hollywood stars. Earlier this week, it commissioned Swedish-Norwegian action thriller The Machinery featuring The Revenant and Mission: Impossible – Fallout star Kristoffer Joner, while Brendan Fraser is to star in The Professionals, a loose remake of the Christian Slater-fronted action movie Soldiers of Fortune for the platform, and Shades of Blue...
This comes after the company unveiled a major management restructure across its business.
Nent Studios Us is being established following Nent Group’s strategic investment in Feig’s production and financing vehicle Picturestart in May. It is in the process of hiring a CEO. Nent was one of the initial backers of the venture alongside Warner Bros, Scholastic and Endeavor Content.
Nent has been attracting international attention for its raft of originals with Hollywood stars. Earlier this week, it commissioned Swedish-Norwegian action thriller The Machinery featuring The Revenant and Mission: Impossible – Fallout star Kristoffer Joner, while Brendan Fraser is to star in The Professionals, a loose remake of the Christian Slater-fronted action movie Soldiers of Fortune for the platform, and Shades of Blue...
- 9/5/2019
- by Peter White
- Deadline Film + TV
The Revenant and Mission: Impossible – Fallout star Kristoffer Joner is to front Swedish-Norwegian action thriller The Machinery for Svod service Viaplay.
The Nordic Entertainment Group-backed streaming service has ordered the eight-part series, to debut in 2020.
It is the latest original for the company, which is rapidly ramping up its slate of originals with A-list talent. In May, Deadline revealed that Brendan Fraser is to star in The Professionals, a loose remake of the Christian Slater-fronted action movie Soldiers of Fortune for the platform, and in March it signed up Shades of Blue creator Adi Hasak to create Margeaux, an international drama about the Munich Olympic massacre.
In The Machinery, Joner plays family man Olle, who wakes up on a ferry between Sweden and Norway with no memory of how he got there. What happened? Why is there a gun, a balaclava and a suitcase full of cash next to him?...
The Nordic Entertainment Group-backed streaming service has ordered the eight-part series, to debut in 2020.
It is the latest original for the company, which is rapidly ramping up its slate of originals with A-list talent. In May, Deadline revealed that Brendan Fraser is to star in The Professionals, a loose remake of the Christian Slater-fronted action movie Soldiers of Fortune for the platform, and in March it signed up Shades of Blue creator Adi Hasak to create Margeaux, an international drama about the Munich Olympic massacre.
In The Machinery, Joner plays family man Olle, who wakes up on a ferry between Sweden and Norway with no memory of how he got there. What happened? Why is there a gun, a balaclava and a suitcase full of cash next to him?...
- 9/3/2019
- by Peter White
- Deadline Film + TV
Interview: Director John Andreas Andersen on the Importance of Practical Sets and More for The Quake
This past Friday, Magnet Releasing unleashed The Quake in theaters and on various digital platforms. A direct sequel to the 2015 Norwegian disaster film The Wave, The Quake was directed by John Andreas Andersen and reunites us with Kristian Eikjord (Kristoffer Joner) and his family three years after the horrific events of the first film, but now, they’re contending with a cataclysmic earthquake that’s set to rock the city of Oslo.
Daily Dead recently caught up with Andersen to discuss taking on such an ambitious project for his feature film directorial debut. He also talked about how his career in cinematography served him well while at the helm of The Quake, his experiences collaborating with Joner, and why he insisted they use practical sets for some of the movie’s impressive action-oriented set pieces.
Good to speak with you today, John, and congrats on The Quake. How much of your background,...
Daily Dead recently caught up with Andersen to discuss taking on such an ambitious project for his feature film directorial debut. He also talked about how his career in cinematography served him well while at the helm of The Quake, his experiences collaborating with Joner, and why he insisted they use practical sets for some of the movie’s impressive action-oriented set pieces.
Good to speak with you today, John, and congrats on The Quake. How much of your background,...
- 12/17/2018
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
The Quake is an upcoming disaster film, from Norway. A sequel to The Wave (2015), this latest feature looks at how a 5.4 magnitude earthquake would effect Oslo. Taking a note from an actual earthquake in 1904, this film builds on the possible devastation, that would rock this Scandinavian city. The Quake will show this week in the U.S., while Canada follows suit at a later date. This film, from director John Andreas Andersen (King of Devil's Island), stars: Kristoffer Joner (The Revenant), Ane Dahl Torp (The Wave), Hang Tran and many more. Already released in Norway, more North American release details are available here. This film focuses on the Oslo Rift. Here, a fault line runs deeply. The Quake looks at what might happen here, if a seismic shift took place, shaking the city of Oslo. Producer Martin Sundland recently spoke of The Quake. At Nordisk Film, Sundland talks about competing...
- 12/12/2018
- by [email protected] (Michael Allen)
- 28 Days Later Analysis
Roar Uthaug’s 2015 “The Wave” revived the pleasures of the 1970s disaster-movie cycle in a form that seemed purer than the never-quite-dead genre’s recent Stateside incarnations — most of which seem to involve Dwayne Johnson in a generic pileup of CGI perils. “The Wave” wasn’t high art, but it was entertainment that delivered some standard satisfactions without treating the viewer like an easy mark.
“The Quake,” written by the same duo of John Kare Raake and Harald Rosenlow Eeg, is a “more of the same” sequel that’s just as good as the original, in nearly identical ways. Yes, there’s a tolerably talky buildup to wade through first, but once again it pays off in heightened human involvement when the mass destruction hits the fan. With Uthaug having defected to Hollywood and the “Tomb Raider” remake, this entry is helmed by veteran cinematographer John Andreas Andersen, whose second...
“The Quake,” written by the same duo of John Kare Raake and Harald Rosenlow Eeg, is a “more of the same” sequel that’s just as good as the original, in nearly identical ways. Yes, there’s a tolerably talky buildup to wade through first, but once again it pays off in heightened human involvement when the mass destruction hits the fan. With Uthaug having defected to Hollywood and the “Tomb Raider” remake, this entry is helmed by veteran cinematographer John Andreas Andersen, whose second...
- 12/12/2018
- by Dennis Harvey
- Variety Film + TV
If you believe that the best disaster movies made today star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, then you are sorely mistaken. The action star that every film fan should be following nowadays is none other than actor Kristoffer Joner. The Norwegian actor is the star of the criminally underrated disaster film “The Wave” and the upcoming sequel “The Quake.” And with his everyman father character, Kristian, Joner has created a hero that you not only root for but you actually care about.
Continue reading ‘The Quake’ Exclusive: A Man Must Save His Kid Atop A Falling Skyscraper In This Anxiety-Inducing Clip at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘The Quake’ Exclusive: A Man Must Save His Kid Atop A Falling Skyscraper In This Anxiety-Inducing Clip at The Playlist.
- 12/12/2018
- by Charles Barfield
- The Playlist
Another day, another disaster movie though this time, don't expect The Rock to be showing up to save the day.
John Andreas Andersen's latest is The Quake, a disaster movie which imagines the destruction of Oslo if a big enough earthquake were to strike.
The movie co-stars Kristoffer Joner who also starred in another disaster movie from Norway, the disappointing The Wave which suggested destruction to come but didn't deliver until the very end. At least in the case of The Quake, it looks like the destruction will come early and there will be much of it.
Andersen has a background as a cinematographer, including Headhunters, Babycall and King of Devil's Island, which certainly bodes well for his latest which looks impressive.
:::Brea...
John Andreas Andersen's latest is The Quake, a disaster movie which imagines the destruction of Oslo if a big enough earthquake were to strike.
The movie co-stars Kristoffer Joner who also starred in another disaster movie from Norway, the disappointing The Wave which suggested destruction to come but didn't deliver until the very end. At least in the case of The Quake, it looks like the destruction will come early and there will be much of it.
Andersen has a background as a cinematographer, including Headhunters, Babycall and King of Devil's Island, which certainly bodes well for his latest which looks impressive.
:::Brea...
- 11/13/2018
- QuietEarth.us
In recent years Norway has been cranking out some fantastic genre films – Troll Hunter, Dead Snow and its sequel, Rare Exports, Thale and the Cold Prey series. Speaking of the latter, director Roar Uthaug, the man behind the three Cold Prey movies, turned his hand from the horrors of the slasher movie to the horrors of nature with The Wave, a disaster movie of real-life proportions – which screened back in February 2016 at Glasgow Frightfest and was followed by a home entertainment release, here in the UK, in August of the same year.
Well now comes The Quake, a follow-up to that film which sees The Wave star Kristoffer Joner return as geologist Kristian Eikjord, this time under the direction of John Andreas Andersen, who worked as a cinematographer on such films as King of Devil’s Island and the Jo Nesbo adaptation Headhunters.
In 1904 an earthquake with a 5.4 magnitude on the Richter scale shook Oslo.
Well now comes The Quake, a follow-up to that film which sees The Wave star Kristoffer Joner return as geologist Kristian Eikjord, this time under the direction of John Andreas Andersen, who worked as a cinematographer on such films as King of Devil’s Island and the Jo Nesbo adaptation Headhunters.
In 1904 an earthquake with a 5.4 magnitude on the Richter scale shook Oslo.
- 10/30/2018
- by Phil Wheat
- Nerdly
"Oslo has experienced this before. And now it's happening again." Magnolia Pictures has released the a new official Us trailer for The Quake, the "next big disaster movie from Norway" following the smash hit The Wave from a few years back. This movie is about a massive earthquake that hits Oslo, centered on a fault-line underneath the city of 1.7 million people. They had a big quake in 1904, but they still aren't prepared. The story follows various people trying to survive, of course. Also titled Skjelvet in Norwegian, the movie opened in Norway this summer, and it's opening in Us theaters this December. Starring Ane Dahl Torp, Kristoffer Joner, Hang Tran, and Jonas Hoff Oftebro. It's fun to see Norway promoting their country through Emmerich-esque disaster movies, at least it's a change from the cities we usually see. Check it out. Here's the official Us trailer (+ poster) for John Andreas Andersen's The Quake,...
- 10/29/2018
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
The unluckiest family in Norway decides to move to Oslo, which makes the fair citizens there quake in their boots. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the family that survived Roar Uthaug's terrific thriller The Wave (2015) is on hand for a sequel that looks to decimate an entire city (?!). Even though director Uthaug has moved on to other projects, lead actors Kristoffer Joner and Ane Dahl Torp have returned, which should ensure a continuity of good performances. Presumably the film is about more than just the quake itself and surviving the aftermath, but the new trailer does a good job of showcasing what can happen to a city when wide-scale disaster strikes. (I grew up in Los Angeles, so I never go...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 10/29/2018
- Screen Anarchy
We have been enormous fans of Norway's Fredrik Hana in these pages for years now. Hana has always been something of an outsider talent, delivering a string of frequently bizarre and always intensely high quality short films with his own distinctive style. He's absolutely unwavering in his vision and Hana returns now with his latest short. In the wake of his massive and destructive 50th birthday party, Vinny, the head of a vast criminal empire, is visited by Hjalmar, his childhood friend and partner in crime. What should have been a pleasant meeting is strained by the growing distance between the two men, and things take a dark turn when Vinny asks his visitor to perform a simple favor. Kristoffer Joner - arguably Norway's biggest...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 9/14/2018
- Screen Anarchy
"But what if it's not the same strength as in 1904...?" Nordisk Filmdistribusjon already released an official trailer for a Norwegian disaster movie titled The Quake, the next big Norwegian disaster movie to follow the highly successful The Wave from 2015. As you might expect, the movie is about an Earthquake that hits Oslo, centered on a fault-line underneath the city of 1.7 million. Also known as Skjelvet in Norwegian, this is opening in August in Norway but still has no other international release plans set yet. Starring Ane Dahl Torp, Kristoffer Joner, Hang Tran, and Jonas Hoff Oftebro. The footage actually looks like a Roland Emmerich-esque disaster movie, so good work in that sense, but I'm not too sure it's going to be any good. Here's the official Norwegian trailer (+ poster) for John Andreas Andersen's The Quake, from YouTube: Here's the terrifying official synopsis: In 1904 an earthquake of magnitude...
- 7/20/2018
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
A tsunami devastates a picturesque fjord but it’s the human drama that counts
The idea of a tsunami threatening the chintz and troll-heavy tat shops of a small Norwegian tourist town by a fjord might not have the same dramatic impact as the Hollywood alternative. But that doesn’t stop director Roar Uthaug squeezing every last drop of epic potential out of his premise. The setting is the town of Geiranger, impossibly pretty and nestled at the foot of a mountain that shifts restlessly, rocks popping like gunshots as the geological time bomb threatens to blow. A scientist at the early warning station, Kristian (Kristoffer Joner), is about to leave his job to work for an oil company. But he senses that something is amiss. His former colleagues are reluctant to accept the possibility that this could be the big one, even as the score swells ominously and the computer monitors shriek with alarm.
The idea of a tsunami threatening the chintz and troll-heavy tat shops of a small Norwegian tourist town by a fjord might not have the same dramatic impact as the Hollywood alternative. But that doesn’t stop director Roar Uthaug squeezing every last drop of epic potential out of his premise. The setting is the town of Geiranger, impossibly pretty and nestled at the foot of a mountain that shifts restlessly, rocks popping like gunshots as the geological time bomb threatens to blow. A scientist at the early warning station, Kristian (Kristoffer Joner), is about to leave his job to work for an oil company. But he senses that something is amiss. His former colleagues are reluctant to accept the possibility that this could be the big one, even as the score swells ominously and the computer monitors shriek with alarm.
- 8/14/2016
- by Wendy Ide
- The Guardian - Film News
Norway gets the old-fashioned disaster film genre up on its feet again with a well-made, scary story set in a Northern fjord, where a devastating tsunami is a genuine threat. Fine acting by fresh faces helps as well -- with no Bs or hype to get in the way, we find ourselves as anxious as the characters in the movie. The Wave Blu-ray Magnolia Home Entertainment 2015 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 105 min. / Bølgen / Street Date June 21, 2016 / 26.97 Starring Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp, Jonas Hoff Oftebro, Edith Haagenrud-Sande, Fridtjov Såheim, Laila Goody, Arthur Berning, Herman Bernhoft. Cinematography John Christian Rosenlund Film Editor Christian Siebenherz Original Music Magnus Beite Written by John Kåre Raake, Harald Rosenløw-Eeg Produced by Are Heidenstrom, Martin Sundland Directed by Roar Uthaug
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Probably the most astounding natural disaster footage we've seen came from Northern Japan in 2011. Much of it is still up on the web. We're...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Probably the most astounding natural disaster footage we've seen came from Northern Japan in 2011. Much of it is still up on the web. We're...
- 6/7/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
It’s hard to believe that June is already upon us, but here we are, getting ready for another summer season filled with blockbuster movies, outdoor activities and all sorts of shenanigans. For those of you looking to avoid the direct sunlight as much as possible, there’s a handful of VOD titles arriving this month that should undoubtedly keep you busy.
June’s VOD offerings kick off with the Snapchat-themed flick Sickhouse, which debuts on Vimeo. The first half of the month is also filled with a few otherworldly offerings like Girl in Woods, Mark of the Witch, and Monsterland. The highly anticipated Clown finally comes home on June 17th and the month closes out with the supernatural-themed Accidental Exorcist.
Sickhouse (available exclusively on Vimeo) – June 1st
Sickhouse follows a group of friends obsessed with social media that go on an excursion into the woods to explore the lore of Sickhouse.
June’s VOD offerings kick off with the Snapchat-themed flick Sickhouse, which debuts on Vimeo. The first half of the month is also filled with a few otherworldly offerings like Girl in Woods, Mark of the Witch, and Monsterland. The highly anticipated Clown finally comes home on June 17th and the month closes out with the supernatural-themed Accidental Exorcist.
Sickhouse (available exclusively on Vimeo) – June 1st
Sickhouse follows a group of friends obsessed with social media that go on an excursion into the woods to explore the lore of Sickhouse.
- 5/31/2016
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
Roar Uthaug’s The Wave crashes on the shores of Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD on June 21st. Also in this round-up: production details on Jessica Cameron’s An Ending, release details for Sacrifice and The Divine Tragedies, and Kickstarter launch details for Night Wolf.
The Wave: “Nestled in Norway’s Sunnmøre region, Geiranger is one of the most spectacular tourist draws on the planet. With the mountain Åkerneset overlooking the village — and constantly threatening to collapse into the fjord — it is also a place where cataclysm could strike at any moment. After putting in several years at Geiranger’s warning centre, geologist Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) is moving on to a prestigious gig with an oil company. But the very day he’s about to drive his family to their new life in the city, Kristian senses something isn’t right. The substrata are shifting. No one wants to believe...
The Wave: “Nestled in Norway’s Sunnmøre region, Geiranger is one of the most spectacular tourist draws on the planet. With the mountain Åkerneset overlooking the village — and constantly threatening to collapse into the fjord — it is also a place where cataclysm could strike at any moment. After putting in several years at Geiranger’s warning centre, geologist Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) is moving on to a prestigious gig with an oil company. But the very day he’s about to drive his family to their new life in the city, Kristian senses something isn’t right. The substrata are shifting. No one wants to believe...
- 4/5/2016
- by Tamika Jones
- DailyDead
For those of you genre fans out there always on the lookout for interesting horror and sci-fi films to enjoy from the comfort of your own home, March’s VOD selections feature several great indie movies that should make for some entertaining viewings this month.
Ava’s Possessions, a film I really dug out of last year’s SXSW Film Festival, is finally making its way onto VOD this Friday and Emelie, the babysitter thriller from Dark Sky Films, is also getting a digital release that day. Other titles arriving on VOD in early March include The Wave, Road Games and Camino.
The month’s VOD titles are being capped off by a film that I’ve been excited to see for some time, Baskin, which is being released by IFC Midnight on March 25th. Other notable VOD titles for March include Dudes & Dragons, You’re Killing Me, A Haunting...
Ava’s Possessions, a film I really dug out of last year’s SXSW Film Festival, is finally making its way onto VOD this Friday and Emelie, the babysitter thriller from Dark Sky Films, is also getting a digital release that day. Other titles arriving on VOD in early March include The Wave, Road Games and Camino.
The month’s VOD titles are being capped off by a film that I’ve been excited to see for some time, Baskin, which is being released by IFC Midnight on March 25th. Other notable VOD titles for March include Dudes & Dragons, You’re Killing Me, A Haunting...
- 3/21/2016
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
The Wave (Bølgen) Magnolia Pictures Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya d-based on Rotten Tomatoes Grade: C Director: Roar Uthaug Written by: John Kare Raake, Harald Rosenlow Eeg Cast: Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp, Jonas Oftebro Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 2/3/16 Opens: March 4, 2016 In perhaps the best disaster movie of recent times, “Force Majeure,” the emphasis is on human conflict rather than simply on the dynamics of avalanche and tsunami. When residents of a French alpine hotel are threatened by the imminent disaster, the father, refusing to scoop up his child and grab his wife instead runs in the other direction to save his own skin. This [ Read More ]
The post The Wave Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post The Wave Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 3/8/2016
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
Chicago – Last year, we witnessed the American disaster porn of “San Andreas,” an overwrought attempt to destroy California on film. Norway has an entry into the disaster genre – “The Wave” – and unlike the American special effects pile-on, it’s based on real possibilities, and features a family that won’t give up or give in.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
The film is two movies, pre-and-post the wave (tsunami) disaster, and the beginning is better and more tense than the post wave turmoil, but overall the film is absorbing in the way that all the better “what ifs” are. The Scandinavian emotions presented are much more pragmatic and less “heroic” – as would be seen in a modern American disaster movie. The depiction of the disaster is based on a real-world possibility, there are towns among some of high cliffs of Norway, and those cliffs are unstable (much like the relationships of the family in...
Rating: 3.5/5.0
The film is two movies, pre-and-post the wave (tsunami) disaster, and the beginning is better and more tense than the post wave turmoil, but overall the film is absorbing in the way that all the better “what ifs” are. The Scandinavian emotions presented are much more pragmatic and less “heroic” – as would be seen in a modern American disaster movie. The depiction of the disaster is based on a real-world possibility, there are towns among some of high cliffs of Norway, and those cliffs are unstable (much like the relationships of the family in...
- 3/6/2016
- by [email protected] (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
You may not know the name Roar Uthaug, but you're likely to hear a lot more of it. The rising Norwegian filmmaker has booked his first Hollywood gig, helming the upcoming "Tomb Raider" reboot, and that's in part due to his work on the disaster flick "The Wave." Today we have a taste of the picture that got him on many radars. Read More: Watch: New U.S. Trailer For Norway's Disaster Movie Oscar Entry 'The Wave' Starring Kristoffer Joner ("The Revenant"), Ane Dahl Torp ("Dead Snow"), and Thomas Bo Larsen ("The Hunt"), the film is centered around Geiranger, one of Norway's biggest tourist destinations that soon comes in the path of a deadly natural disaster, that will risk the lives of everyone in its path. Here's the synopsis: Nestled in Norway's Sunnmøre region, Geiranger is one of the most spectacular tourist draws on the planet. With the mountain Åkerneset overlooking the village — and constantly.
- 3/4/2016
- by Edward Davis
- The Playlist
Roar Uthaug’s Hollywood-style action picture about a natural disaster is a soak in torment and doubt – and about as subtle as a big red panic button
The Wave teaches us two things. One: you don’t need to be from Hollywood to make a big, dumb Hollywood action picture. Two: between this and Force Majeure, you should take your vacation anywhere other than in view of Europe’s natural splendor.
We meet Kristian (Kristoffer Joner), a handsome Norwegian geologist with mixed feelings about his last day at work. He’s about to take his family away from Geiranger, a gorgeous tourist town built alongside a fjord. (I highly recommend slipping its name into Google image search, it’s absolutely stunning.) His new gig is “in the city” for an oil company, and even though he tries to sell his wife and two children on their modern home with a...
The Wave teaches us two things. One: you don’t need to be from Hollywood to make a big, dumb Hollywood action picture. Two: between this and Force Majeure, you should take your vacation anywhere other than in view of Europe’s natural splendor.
We meet Kristian (Kristoffer Joner), a handsome Norwegian geologist with mixed feelings about his last day at work. He’s about to take his family away from Geiranger, a gorgeous tourist town built alongside a fjord. (I highly recommend slipping its name into Google image search, it’s absolutely stunning.) His new gig is “in the city” for an oil company, and even though he tries to sell his wife and two children on their modern home with a...
- 3/4/2016
- by Jordan Hoffman
- The Guardian - Film News
If we were to take a little field trip 40 years or so back in time, we’d see a different type of blockbuster film dominating the big screen. Superheroes had not yet conquered Hollywood. Back then, Mother Nature was the big box office darling. From earthquakes and tsunamis to disastrous fires and devastating accidents, we wanted to see massive amounts of Avenger-scale destruction that only the elements could concoct.
Fast forward to present day and we now watch Thor and Hulk destroy cities in the name of the good fight. Even Godzilla has returned to the cinema to continue his rapturous reptilian rampage. Monsters and heroes are what we seek today, but what of the good ole days when Planet Earth herself was what we feared most? There have been the occasional attempts to bring back that old school tale of man versus nature. The Perfect Storm was a memorable...
Fast forward to present day and we now watch Thor and Hulk destroy cities in the name of the good fight. Even Godzilla has returned to the cinema to continue his rapturous reptilian rampage. Monsters and heroes are what we seek today, but what of the good ole days when Planet Earth herself was what we feared most? There have been the occasional attempts to bring back that old school tale of man versus nature. The Perfect Storm was a memorable...
- 3/4/2016
- by Travis Keune
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
In the past decade Americans have discovered the riches to be found in contemporary Scandinavian cinema, including horror films, thrillers, mysteries, and black comedies. Now comes something entirely different: a Norwegian disaster movie that takes its blueprint from Hollywood. That’s not to discredit The Wave. It’s very well done, and the visual effects are properly spectacular, but it takes all its story beats from mainstream movies we’ve seen many times before. The hero (Kristoffer Joner, who recently appeared in The Revenant) is a...
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- 3/4/2016
- by Leonard Maltin
- Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy
Over the past decade, Norway has managed to out-Hollywood the thrill-happy American film industry by producing their own big-budget spectacles. Works such as the 2010 found-footage oddity Troll Hunter, the 2009 dark horror comedy Dead Snow and its uproariously gory sequel, Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead, and the 2013 action-adventure film Ragnorak recall the finer qualities of big domestic blockbusters, only with the extra cinematic advantage of pristine, breathtakingly photogenic scenery.
Now comes Scandinavia’s first-ever disaster movie, The Wave, which is also notable for its director, Roar Uthaug, Aka the helmer behind the forthcoming Tomb Raider reboot. Based in his past credits, including the alpine horror film Cold Prey and the period thriller Escape, Uthaug is no stranger to crowd-pleasing genre fare, and his latest showcases his knack for utilizing familiar, tried-and-true tropes.
The film opens in Geiranger, a Norwegian fjord-side tourist town situated at the foot of Åkerneset, a mountainous region known for its instability.
Now comes Scandinavia’s first-ever disaster movie, The Wave, which is also notable for its director, Roar Uthaug, Aka the helmer behind the forthcoming Tomb Raider reboot. Based in his past credits, including the alpine horror film Cold Prey and the period thriller Escape, Uthaug is no stranger to crowd-pleasing genre fare, and his latest showcases his knack for utilizing familiar, tried-and-true tropes.
The film opens in Geiranger, a Norwegian fjord-side tourist town situated at the foot of Åkerneset, a mountainous region known for its instability.
- 3/3/2016
- by Amanda Waltz
- The Film Stage
Stars: Kristoffer Joner, Fridtjov Såheim, Ane Dahl Torp, Thomas Bo Larsen, Fridtjov Såheim, Jonas Hoff Oftebro, Arthur Berning, Edith Haagenrud-Sande, Lado Hadzic, Herman Bernhoft, Silje Breivik | Written by John Kåre Raake, Harald Rosenløw-Eeg | Directed by Roar Uthaug
In recent years Norway has been cranking out some fantastic genre films – Troll Hunter, Dead Snow and its sequel, Rare Exports, Thale and the Cold Prey series. All of which have been takes on American genre fare (zombies, slasher movies) or based on folk tales (Rare Exports, Thale). Until now. Director Roar Uthaug, the man behind the three Cold Prey movies, turns his hand from the horrors of the slasher movie to the horrors of nature with The Wave, a disaster movie of real-life proportions…
In the small mountain community of Geiranger, geologist Kristian works at an early warning centre keeping an eye out for rockslides causing potential dangers. The last catastrophe was...
In recent years Norway has been cranking out some fantastic genre films – Troll Hunter, Dead Snow and its sequel, Rare Exports, Thale and the Cold Prey series. All of which have been takes on American genre fare (zombies, slasher movies) or based on folk tales (Rare Exports, Thale). Until now. Director Roar Uthaug, the man behind the three Cold Prey movies, turns his hand from the horrors of the slasher movie to the horrors of nature with The Wave, a disaster movie of real-life proportions…
In the small mountain community of Geiranger, geologist Kristian works at an early warning centre keeping an eye out for rockslides causing potential dangers. The last catastrophe was...
- 2/27/2016
- by Phil Wheat
- Nerdly
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Forrest Goodluck, Paul Anderson, Kristoffer Joner, Joshua Burge, Duane Howard, Melaw Nakehk’o, Fabrice Adde, Arthur RedCloud | Written by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Mark L. Smith | Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
The Revenant a simple story of revenge, but the arduous journey from aggrieved to exacting that revenge is anything but simple. This is Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest film and is a huge departure from last years eccentric, superhero movie Birdman. We join the history of how the USA was colonised at the point where white settlers from Europe have disrupted and destroyed all prior notions of civilisation to such a degree that Native Americans are reduced to the same killer tactics to survive and thrive as their recent arrivals. These are hard, frontiersmen times. Snow is on the mountainous, untamed ground and peace and tranquility is nothing but a fantasy.
The Revenant a simple story of revenge, but the arduous journey from aggrieved to exacting that revenge is anything but simple. This is Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest film and is a huge departure from last years eccentric, superhero movie Birdman. We join the history of how the USA was colonised at the point where white settlers from Europe have disrupted and destroyed all prior notions of civilisation to such a degree that Native Americans are reduced to the same killer tactics to survive and thrive as their recent arrivals. These are hard, frontiersmen times. Snow is on the mountainous, untamed ground and peace and tranquility is nothing but a fantasy.
- 1/26/2016
- by Stuart Wright
- Nerdly
It was only a matter of time. This looks epic! Magnolia Pictures has unveiled an official Us trailer for The Wave, a big disaster movie set in Norway. The film is about a giant wave of water that emerges when a fjord collapses, destroying everything in its path. The plot: "a geologist gets caught in the middle of it and a race against against time begins." Ten minutes extended to two hours! This is the closest we've seen to a Roland Emmerich disaster movie (except San Andreas) and it actually looks damn good. Starring Kristoffer Joner, Thomas Bo Larsen, Ane Dahl Torp and Fridtjov Såheim. Don't ignore this one, give it a look. Here's the first official trailer (+ poster) for Roar Uthaug's The Wave, direct from Magnolia's YouTube: Even though awaited, no-one is really ready when the mountain pass of Åkneset above the scenic narrow Norwegian fjord Geiranger falls...
- 1/20/2016
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards, check out the nerve-racking new trailer for The Wave.
Nestled in Norway’s Sunnmøre region, Geiranger is one of the most spectacular tourist draws on the planet. With the mountain Åkerneset overlooking the village — and constantly threatening to collapse into the fjord — it is also a place where cataclysm could strike at any moment. After putting in several years at Geiranger’s warning center, geologist Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) is moving on to a prestigious gig with an oil company. But the very day he’s about to drive his family to their new life in the city, Kristian senses something isn’t right. The substrata are shifting. No one wants to believe that this could be the big one, especially with tourist season at its peak, but when that mountain begins to crumble, every soul in Geiranger has...
Nestled in Norway’s Sunnmøre region, Geiranger is one of the most spectacular tourist draws on the planet. With the mountain Åkerneset overlooking the village — and constantly threatening to collapse into the fjord — it is also a place where cataclysm could strike at any moment. After putting in several years at Geiranger’s warning center, geologist Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) is moving on to a prestigious gig with an oil company. But the very day he’s about to drive his family to their new life in the city, Kristian senses something isn’t right. The substrata are shifting. No one wants to believe that this could be the big one, especially with tourist season at its peak, but when that mountain begins to crumble, every soul in Geiranger has...
- 1/20/2016
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Kicking off with a special screening of The Forest with star Natalie Dormer in attendance, and finishing in racy rock-fuelled style with Sean Byrne’s The Devil’s Candy, the UK’s favourite horror fantasy event returns to Glasgow Film Festival with another stellar line-up to shock, chill and thrill. A record thirteen films will screen from Thursday 25th February to Saturday 27th February, alongside a selection of unmissable shorts, guest director Q & A’s, great give-aways and a sneak preview of Paul Hyett’s Heretiks, with the popular director in attendance.
The line-up starts at 9pm on Thurs 25 Feb with the UK Premiere of The Forest starring Natalie Dormer searching for her twin sister in Japan’s most haunted location, the fabled Sea of Trees. The ‘Game of Thrones’ star is making her first appearance at Glasgow Film Festival and is thrilled to be headlining this gala event the...
The line-up starts at 9pm on Thurs 25 Feb with the UK Premiere of The Forest starring Natalie Dormer searching for her twin sister in Japan’s most haunted location, the fabled Sea of Trees. The ‘Game of Thrones’ star is making her first appearance at Glasgow Film Festival and is thrilled to be headlining this gala event the...
- 1/11/2016
- by Phil Wheat
- Nerdly
Leonardo DiCaprio‘s “The Revenant” fought to earn $2.3 million from 2,501 screening locations on Thursday night. With a budget of $135 million, the film tells the true story of Hugh Glass (DiCaprio), who was mauled by a bear in the 1820s and was left to die by his comrades. Although seriously injured, he fights his way across the western United States seeking revenge. The film also stars Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Kristoffer Joner and Forrest Goodluck. “Birdman” director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s latest film opened in limited theaters on Dec. 25 to rave reviews. Currently, it holds an 81 percent approval rating from critics.
- 1/8/2016
- by Beatrice Verhoeven
- The Wrap
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