17/10/2008

The legendary star actress Liv Ullmann is back on Norwegian screens today with Through the Glass, Darkly (I et speil i en gate), the screen adaptation of Jostein Gaarder's best-selling novel, directed by the Danish Jesper W. Nielsen.

Ingmar Bergman’s muse who has not played a major part in a Norwegian film in almost four decades, plays the grandmother of 13 year-old Cecilie, who is seriously ill. One night, a strange man who claims to be angel Ariel pays a visit to the teenage girl. The €2.7m film was produced by Turid Øversveen (4½ Production) in co-production with Zentropa, support from the Norwegian and Danish film institutes, and Nordisk Film & TV Fond. Nordisk Film is handing distribution.

The other major European title opening today through Sandrew Metronome is Jan Troell’s Everlasting Moments, carried by an excellent word of mouth and media attention following its warm reception from US and Canadian festival audiences at Telluride and Toronto last month. The film representing Sweden at the Oscars nominations, had its Norwegian premiere at the Bergen Film Festival on Wednesday.

Last weekend was a ‘bloody’ good weekend for Norwegian films, with the chiller Cold Prey 2 making history as the best Norwegian opener ever. The film produced by Fantefilm and distributed by Nordisk Film, sold 101,564 tickets from 94 screens. The last record was held by Mother’s Elling (70,952 admissions in 2003). The prequel Cold Prey [+see also:
trailer
interview: Roar Uthaug
film profile] released in 2006 had 55,045 admission in total. Cold Prey 2 is the feature debut of Swedish filmmaker Mats Stenberg. TrusNordisk handles sales.

Two other Norwegian titles were in the Top ten: Erik Poppe’s Troubled Water, number five with 55,077 admissions in three weeks for Scanbox, and The Last Joint Venture by Ulrik Imtiaz Rolfsen, number ten with over 137,000 admissions in its seventh week for Nordisk Film.