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AWARDS Norway

The Norwegian Film Institute spots three female talents

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- Charlotte Blom, Yngvild Sve Flikke and Tonje Hessen Schei have received VIP scholarships to further develop their work

The Norwegian Film Institute spots three female talents
Director Charlotte Blom (© Nordisk Film Distribusjon AS)

The Norwegian Film Institute has awarded €21,000 VIP scholarships to three Norwegian female directors – Charlotte Blom, Yngvild Sve Flikke and Tonje Hessen Schei – in order to give them time for immersion in and experiments with form and content when developing their next feature-length projects.

A photographer educated in Oslo and Edinburgh, Blom, whose feature debut Staying Alive [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Charlotte Blom
film profile
]
was launched earlier this year, started out making shorts, including A Sunday in Schweigaardsgate (2004), which won an Amanda – Norway’s national film prize – and Coco-Nuts, which toured more than 30 international film festivals, collecting the first prize at Norway’s own Grimstad event, among other trophies. 

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Blom will explore relationships, as she did in Staying Alive, which is a comedy following 34-year-old Marianne (Agnes Kittelsen), who finds out that her husband of ten years (Anders Baasmo Christiansen) is having an affair with one of her colleagues; a divorce is definitely on the cards, and supported by her friend’s wisdom, she stumbles into her new life, discovering that cosiness is overrated. 

Flikke’s first feature, Women in Oversized Men’s Shirts [+see also:
trailer
interview: Yngvild Sve Flikke
film profile
]
, was also premiered earlier in 2015 and is a comedy starring Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Henriette Steenstrup and Anne Krigsvoll as three women in an almost desperate search for themselves and happiness. Having worked for Norwegian pubcaster NRK since 1997, her 2005 documentary DumDum Boys – 5 Men, 5 Songs received the Norwegian TV industry’s Golden Screen Award. She has previously incorporated animation into her films, and her new project – also about young women’s problems – will make further use of this visual concept.

Drone [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, Schei’s third documentary about CIA drone warfare, was named Most Valuable Documentary of the Year and was presented with the Cinema for Peace Award in Berlin; it also won an Amanda and several other prizes, including the Amnesty International Award at San Sebastián, and the Norwegian Peace Film Award in Tromsø. Also behind Independent Intervention (2006) and Play Again (2010), she is – according to the institute – “a new voice with a strong drive, and a great ability to get through to difficult sources”. Her next film will delve into the topic of artificial intelligence.

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