Country Focus: Norway

Kid movie Knerten breaks opening record

by  Annika Pham

23/10/2009 - Released last Friday by Scanbox Entertainment, Knerten [trailer], the directorial debut of Norwegian actor/stand-up comedian Åsleik Engmark, has had the best opening ever for a Norwegian children’s film, with over 65,000 admissions from 125 screens.

With over 13,000 admissions from preview screenings, Knerten was seen by nearly 79,000 Norwegians in its opening weekend, an opening similar to Mother Elling (70,952 admissions). This year’s best opening weekend until now was for horror spoof Dead Snow [trailer] (40,054 admissions).

Based on Anne-Cath Vestly’s literary children’s classics, Knerten is the story of a lonely little boy, Lillebror, who befriends a wooden twig, Knerten, who can speak. While his father is travelling as an underwear salesman and his mother starts working in a store to make ends meet, Lillebror and Knerten have many exciting adventures.

The film was produced by Finn Gjerdrum and Stein B. Kvae for Paradox, who is already preparing a sequel.

Three other Norwegian films were also in the top ten last weekend: Margreth Olin’s The Angel [trailer] (distributed by Sandrew Metronome), about a woman struggling with her drug addiction, was number five its third week; youth drama Vegas [trailer] (SF) by Gunnar Vikene was number nine in its fourth week; and Håkon Gundersen’s WW2 drama Betrayal (SF) was tenth after two weeks on release.

Sara Johnsen’s critically acclaimed Upperdog [trailer] is the biggest Norwegian success of the autumn so far with over 100,000 admissions for Sandrew Metronome.

Today’s new openers include the French film Le Code a Changé [trailer], distributed by Oro Film, and Machan [trailer], the UK/Italian/German/Sri Lankan film directed by Uberto Pasolini and released locally by Fidalgo.