26/11/2012 - Norwegian directors Espen Sandberg, Joachim Rønning, Anita Killi and Knut Erik Jensen are awarded VIP Scholarships from the Norwegian Film Institute

Norwegian directors Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning (photo), whose latest features Kon-Tiki [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (2012) and Max Manus [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2008) have sold more than two million tickets domestically, are among the four filmmakers who have received a €27,000 VIP Scholarship from the Norwegian Film Institute. Anita Killi and Knut Erik Jensen were also presented with the institute award.

This year also presented to Arild Andresen, Vibeke Idsøe, Nils Gaup and Eva Dahr, the scholarship is intended to help established directors find time and room to experiment with form and content for a new project that they want to realise, and part of the institute's efforts to strengthen the diversity and artistic expression of Norwegian film.

Having delivered Norway's submission for the 2013 Oscar as Best Foreign-Language Feature (Kon-Tiki), Sandberg and Rønning are currently developing the script for a "spectacular Viking epic which we have always dreamed of making", said Rønning. "It will be a strong and visual story," said Sandberg about the film, which will be adapted from a novel set in 1010 by Tore Kvæven.

Following eight fully animated shorts, most recently Angry Man (2009), Killi is currently preparing her first feature, Christmas Survivors, based on a book by Ove Røsbak. "So the scholarship is extremely welcome – putting together an animated social-realistic Christmas movie takes a lot of time," said Killi, who is at the same time working to set up a new animation studio at Dovre.

Jensen just returned from Hollywood, where he filmed a short from Norwegian author Knut Hamsun's novella Voice of Life (1896), starring Norwegian actress Ellen Dorrit Petersen and US actor Joseph Culp. Credited with the documentary blockbuster Cool and Crazy (2001), Jensen's most recent film was The Acute Man (2011), a biopic of Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert.