04/03/2014 - Award-winning director Sara Johnsen is preparing a feel-good drama with support from the Norwegian Film Institute

A baby girl, Rose Marie, is found abandoned in a restaurant toilet. At the same time, TV journalist Unn Tove marries the wrong man. Seventeen years later they meet, and together they set out to find the girl’s biological parents – her true origins.

Their search takes them to Hønefoss, from where they trace a young couple to the pornographic industry in Copenhagen. This is the story told by Norwegian director Sara Johnsen in her new feel-good drama, Nobody’s Darling, which will start shooting in the autumn for Norwegian producer Turid Øversveen’s Fiksjon 4½.

Awarded five Amandas – Norway’s national film prize – including Best Film and Best Director for her Upperdog [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2009), Johnsen most recently directed All That Matters Is Past [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2012). Nobody’s Darling, for which she herself wrote the script, is the second film in a package of three from the Johnsen-Øversveen teaming, with support coming from the Norwegian Film Institute. Norsk Filmdistribusjon will handle the domestic release from autumn 2015.

While Johnsen’s project received €1.5 million worth of institute funding, Norwegian director Yngvild Sve Flikke was allocated €0.9 million for her feature debut, Wait, Blink, adapted from Norwegian author Gunnhild Øyehaug’s 2008 novel of the same title.

Øyehaug worked on the screenplay with Sve Flikke, and the plot follows three women at different stages of their lives, sharing an almost desperate search for their inner selves and happiness. The film describing “instincts, dreams, women and men, love and being one’s true self” will be produced by Yngve Sæther for Motlys, and will begin principal photography on 26 May. Norsk Filmdistribusjon will launch it domestically in August 2015.