03/07/2013 - Norwegian director Arne Skouen's Nine Lives is screening at the Italian festival for rediscoveries, which runs to July 6

Norwegian legendary director Arne Skouen’s Nine Lives (1957), which screened in competition at Cannes and nominated for an Oscar, will be the first Norwegian film to show in Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato – the festival for rediscoveries of rare and little-known films with a particular focus on cinema origins, which runs through July 6.

Starring Jack Fjeldstad and Henny Moan, the film is set in German-occupied Norway March 1943 – 11 Norwegian soldiers from the Norwegian resistance make a clandestine landing on the coast, but they have been betrayed and are all killed but one – Jan Baalsrud – who makes his way across the snow-covered country towards the Swedish border.

Celebrating the 100^th anniversary of Skouen’s birth (he died in 2003), the Norwegian National Library are currently restoring all his 17 features produced during 20 years, so the festival will screen Nine Lives from a new print. Also a journalist and an author, Skouen’s feature debut was Boys from the Street (1949).

Norwegian Hollywood director Harald Zwart (The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones/Ashes) and writer Petter Skavlan (Kon-Tiki [+see also:
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The programme of this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato also includes two films from World War I, presented by the European Film Gateway 1914 project, a consortium of 25 archives and other partners from 15 countries, including – from Scandinavia – the Danish Film Institute.

Photo: Jack Fjeldstad and Henny Moan