As August 2020 saw increasing infection rates, travel restrictions and quarantine rules, the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund resorted to its plan B. Luckily, the team had a good one, adapted for digital solutions and even with a hand-picked physical audience for the national Amanda Awards ceremony (the winners, basically). This year’s edition (running from 21-27 August), the 49^th since it started in 1972, promises a real return to form. Plan A has A-list festival favourites, and myriad audience and industry attendees. Almost business as usual.

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Opening with Eskil Vogt’s Cannes spine-chiller The Innocents [+lire aussi :
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interview : Eskil Vogt
fiche film] and closing with Thomas Daneskov’s Tribeca entry Wild Men [+lire aussi :
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interview : Thomas Daneskov
fiche film], the programme offers 62 features and 23 short films. Domestic presence is at record strength, with 14 Norwegian features and 15 shorts in the line-up, including six world premieres, among them Paul Tunge’s architecture documentary Mind of Modernism and Stay Home, an ambitious account of the pandemic by Maren Victoria Thingnæs and Marianne Mørk, following a group of children from eight different countries over 11 months. The Danish-Norwegian effort Margrete – Queen of the North [+lire aussi :
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interview : Charlotte Sieling
fiche film], Charlotte Sieling’s much-anticipated biographical feature starring Trine Dyrholm, will also be given a world premiere.

The Nordic Focus section offers an ample array of recent festival fare, such as Juho Kuosmanen’s Cannes Grand Prix winner Compartment No. 6 [+lire aussi :
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interview : Juho Kuosmanen
fiche film] and Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s Directors’ Fortnight discovery Clara Sola [+lire aussi :
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interview : Nathalie Álvarez Mesén
fiche film] as well as Ninja Thyberg’s porn-industry fable Pleasure [+lire aussi :
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interview : Ninja Thyberg
fiche film], Khadar Ahmed’s The Gravedigger’s Wife [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] and Christoffer Boe’s A Taste of Hunger [+lire aussi :
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fiche film]. Documentary picks include Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Oscar-mooted Flee [+lire aussi :
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interview : Jonas Poher Rasmussen
fiche film] and The Most Beautiful Boy in the World [+lire aussi :
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interview : Kristina Lindström et Kris…
fiche film], Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri’s tender portrait of Björn “Tadzio” Andrésen, who took the world by storm in Visconti’s Death in Venice in 1971. There will be international favourites aplenty, including titles like Jasmila Žbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida? [+lire aussi :
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interview : Jasmila Žbanić
fiche film], Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Man Who Sold His Skin [+lire aussi :
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interview : Kaouther Ben Hania
fiche film] and Olga [+lire aussi :
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interview : Elie Grappe
fiche film] by Elie Grappe as well as Julia Ducournau’s red-hot Palme d’Or winner Titane [+lire aussi :
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interview : Julia Ducournau, Vincent L…
fiche film] as a likely pièce de résistance. A possible national contender for all this excitement may well be A-HA – The Movie [+lire aussi :
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interview : Thomas Robsahm
fiche film], directed by Thomas Robsahm and Aslaug Holm, which was 12 years in the making. The story of Norway’s greatest 1980s pop sensation, which world-premiered at Tribeca in June, is now, at long last, landing in the motherland, with a Haugesund-hosted national premiere on 23 August.

True to tradition, the festival kicks off with the Amanda Awards on 21 August, held, as always, at the Festiviteten concert hall. Leading this year’s favourites is Yngvild Sve Flikke’s dramedy Ninjababy [+lire aussi :
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interview : Kristine Kujath Thorp
interview : Yngvild Sve Flikke
fiche film], with 11 nominations, followed by Eirik Svensson’s historical World War II drama Betrayed [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], with nine nods, and Itonje Søimer Guttormsen’s radical character study Gritt [+lire aussi :
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interview : Itonje Søimer Guttormsen
fiche film], with eight. The big documentary contender is Benjamin Ree’s The Painter and the Thief [+lire aussi :
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interview : Benjamin Ree
fiche film], an international favourite and Sundance winner, which has racked up five nominations.

The full programme of the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund can be found here.