19/08/2016 - The 44th Norwegian International Film Festival, which launches its main programme this Sunday 21 August, will be closed by Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s Cave

Not quite as long as Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, hosting Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, Haraldsgata – the main street in Haugesund, Western Norway, the home of the Norwegian International Film Festival – last year inaugurated its own walk, with Amanda stones (named after the Norwegian national film prize) for Norwegian actors Kristoffer Joner and Ane Dahl Torp.

This year, they will be joined by US-based Norwegian actress-director Liv Ullmann, who has acted in 58 films (and been Oscar-nominated for two of them); the long-time companion of Swedish writer-director Ingmar Bergman is also the honorary president of the Haugesund Festival. Furthermore, Norwegian actor Jakob Oftebro, the youngest actor ever to enter Norway’s National Theatre School – and the host of this year’s Amanda Awards ceremony (set to take place on 26 August) – will have his name carved into the granite.

With the 44^th edition of the festival all ready to launch on Saturday (20 August), and the main programme set to be opened the following day by Norwegian director Vibeke Idsøe’s The Lion Woman [+see also:
trailer
interview: Vibeke Idsøe
film profile], festival and programme director Tonje Hardersen has added Norwegian director Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken’s thriller Cave [+see also:
trailer
film profile] as the gathering’s closing title on 25 August. Norwegian filmmaker Benjamin Ree’s documentary Magnus [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] will also be on show in the selection.

The local films will all be represented by their directors and cast; other festival guests include Italian actor Valerio Mastandrea (from Paolo Genovese’s Perfect Strangers [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]), Swedish actress-director Pernilla August (with her second feature as a director, A Serious Game [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Karin Franz Körlof
film profile]), Swedish director Måns Månsson (with The Yard [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) and Danish actress Sofie Gråbøl (from Jesper W Nielsen’s The Day Will Come [+see also:
trailer
film profile]).

Running at the Scandic Maritim Hotel between 22 and 25 August, New Nordic Films – the festival’s industry section – will this year boast 19 new productions in the Nordic Co-Production and Finance Market, seven projects in the Nordic Genre Boost (organised with the Nordisk Film & TV Fond) and 20 works in progress, which will for the first time be competing for the Eurimages Lab Project Award, worth €50,000. According to market director Gyda Velvin Myklebust, a record number of 380 film professionals have registered for the programme.