World’s first war- and conflict-films festival to unspool in Norway
Movies on War - the world’s first annual film festival focusing on wars and conflicts - will unspool from November 17-20 in the Elverum and Åmot regions of Norway, under the direction of Vigdis Lian, former managing director of the Norwegian Film Institute, and head of programming at the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund.
Organised by Østnorsk Filmcenter in Lillehammer, with Film3, in collaboration with local authorities, the festival will screen 46 features, adding documentaries and shorts. The opening film will be Austrian director Wolfgang Murnberger’s My Best Enemy, the Moritz Bleitreu starrer, which was in competition at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.
”Even today Norway is a country at war – with Afghanistan – which should have been the main theme, until the July 22 terror events in Norway,” explained Lian, who is programme director of the showcase. ”They gave cause for some changes in the timetable, but the idea is still to put wars and conflicts into an ideological perspective, with a Norwegian point-of-view in mind.”
Norwegian professor Gunnar Iversen will lecture on Norwegian war history, and a sidebar will depict the world at war between 1914-2014. (It was in Elverum that Norwegian King Håkon VII said ’No’ to Nazi-Germany’s demands for surrender on April 9, 1940; the Elverum-Åmot region is the centre of military education in Norway).
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