28/08/2015 - The Norwegian Oscar committee has selected three candidates for the Oscar nomination for Best Foreign-language Feature

The Norwegian Oscar committee today (28 August) announced the shortlist of candidates for the nomination for the Oscar for Best Foreign-language Feature: the titles are Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s Returning Home, Anne Sewitsky’s Homesick [+see also:
trailer
interview: Ine Marie Wilmann
film profile] and Roar Uthaug’s The Wave [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Roar Uthaug
film profile]. 

Both The Wave, which will be released domestically today, and Homesick, which was launched at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Utah, will screen at the Toronto International Film Festival (10-20 September). Returning Home will shortly have its international festival premiere. 

The Oscar committee picked its candidates from among 21 Norwegian productions premiered between 1 October 2014 and 30 September 2015. 

Returning Home [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is Dahlsbakken’s first feature, about two young brothers who are trying to track down their father after he goes missing during a reindeer hunt in the mountains, having just returned from serving in Afghanistan. Dahlsbakken also wrote and produced the FilmBros production, which stars Åsmund Høeg, Fredrik Grøndahl and Ingar Helge Gimle in the leads.

Homesick, scripted by Ragnhild Tronvoll and Sewitsky, stars Ine Marie Wilmann and Simon J Berger as Charlotte (27), who meets her half-brother, Henrik (35), for the first time. Neither of them knows what normal family life is, and how do you express sibling love if you have never experienced it before? Synnøve Hørsdal and Åshild Ariane Ramborg produced the movie for Maipo Film. 

The Wave, Scandinavia’s first disaster movie, is about a geologist at work in the Geiranger Fjord, who realises that in ten minutes’ time a landslide will trigger a tsunami the same size as that which caused the 1934 Tafjord tragedy, which claimed 40 lives. Kristoffer Joner and Ane Dahl Torp play the leads in the Martin Sundland-Are Heidenstrøm production for Fantefilm. 

After 1 October, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will draw up its own shortlist of candidates – the final nominations will be made public on 14 January 2016. The Academy Awards ceremony will take place on 28 February 2016.