05/12/2013 - Norwegian directors Eskil Vogt’s Blind, Mona Fastvold’s Sleepwalker and Swedish director Göran Hugo Olsson’s Concerning Violence selected for the showcase between January 16-26

Three Nordic films will compete in different sections at the Sundance Film Festival – America’s premier showcase for independent films in Park City, Utah – which runs between January 16-26, 2014: Norwegian directors Eskil Vogt’s Blind [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Eskil Vogt
interview: Eskil Vogt
film profile], Mona Fastvold’s Sleepwalker and Swedish director Göran Hugo Olsson’s documentary, Concerning Violence.

Both Norwegian entries are first features and world premieres. Blind is the directorial debut of Vogt, the scriptwriter of ao Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s award-winning Reprise [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Trier
interview: Karin Julsrud
film profile] and Oslo, August 31^st [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Trier
film profile]. He has also written the story of a woman who has become blind and refuses to leave her apartment.  

She gets the feeling that when her husband says he is going to work, he doesn’t; when he is emailing his colleagues, he is actually chatting with his mistress. At the same time Eline, newly divorced, lies to her daughter about her loneliness – across the street a man is watching her through the window. Also written by Vogt, and produced by Norway’s Motlys, Blind starring Ellen Dorrit Petersen and Henrik Rafaelsen will screen in the World Competition.

Actress-turned-director Fastvold’s Sleepwalker is mainly filmed in the US with Norwegian actress Gitte Witt in the lead as Kaia, whose peaceful life is turned upside down with the unexpected arrival of her sister Christine and her fiancé, Ira. With an American cast including Brady Corbet (who co-wrote the script with Fastvold) and Christopher Abbott, it was produced by Norway’s 4½ Film with New York’s Tandem Pictures; in Sundance it will participate in the US Dramatic Competition.

The Swedish entry in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, Olsson’s Concerning Violence is based on Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961) present-day neo-colonialism and the unrest and reactions it provokes. The “visual narrative from Africa – images of the pursuit of freedom, the Cold War and Sweden” follows up on his The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2011), which won a Guldbagga – Sweden’s national film prize – for Best Editing, and took the same honour in Sundance.