Sewitsky-Hørsdal still Happy, Happy with NFI finance for three films

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

28/06/2012 - The Norwegian Film Institute will support the next two to three films from Norwegian director Anne Sewitsky (photo) and producer Synnøve Hørsdal, of Maipo Film & TV Produksjon AS, after they were awarded slate funding as the fourth director-producer team, following Joachim Trier-Yngve Sæther (Motlys), Sara Johnsen-Turid Øversveen (4½) and Erik Poppe-Finn Gjerdrum (Paradox).

Sewitsky-Hørsdal recently announced that they have started casting for a €7.6 million biopic of Norwegian figure skater-turned-Hollywood star Sonja Henie – the ten-time World Champion, six-time European Champion, and a three-time Olympic Champion, who was in 1936 signed by Twentieth Century Fox to become one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood. She played in ten films.

A producer with Maipo since 2001, today the company’s managing director, Hørsdal produced Sewitsky’s feature debut, Happy, Happy [trailer] (2010), which received the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and sold more than 50 countries for TrustNordisk, including the US (Magnolia Pictures). It also won an Amanda, Norway’s national film award.

Credited for the shorts Heartcut and Oh, My God!, adding several episodes of the Norwegian Cozy television series, Sewitsky went on to direct the children’s film, Totally True Love [trailer] (2011). “She belongs to a new generation of filmmakers which will provide vitality and power to Norwegian cinema in the coming years,” said Norwegian Film Institute head of production Ivar Køhn.

Hørsdal and Maipo are currently in production with Norwegian director Arild Fröhlich’s Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder, from Jo Nesbø (Headhunters [trailer]) children’s book. According to the institute’s slate-funding scheme, Sewitsky-Hørsdal will receive development and production finance for two features, with the possibility of adding a third.