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FESTIVALS Norway

Filmfest Oslo to return in 2013 with emphasis on local films

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- After 'ositive feedback from audience and industry', the organisers of Oslo’s new international film festival have decided it is here to stay

After screening 50 films in five days at five venues (Folketeateret, Ringen, Eldorado, Klingenberg, Gimle – February 29-March 4) during their first Filmfest Oslo, festival director Arild Støfring (pictured) and head of programming Morten Steingrimsen (pictured) have received "so much positive feedback from audience – more than 13,000 - and industry” that it will be back in 2013.

“All expressed that the festival has strengthened Oslo’s position on the Nordic film map, both due to the selection and the visiting filmmakers, and especially as a launching platform for new local features. So after further evaluations of the concept and discussions with our partners, we will announce the plans for next year’s festival,” Støfring explained.

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Festival guests included UK Oscar-winning actor Ben Kingsley and US author Brian Selznick of US director Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning Hugo; Norwegian director Petter Næss, Danish producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen and their team of Florian Lukas, David Kross, Rupert Grint, Lachlan Nieboer and Stig Henrik Hoff for Næss’s Into the White [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
.

There were also Danish directors Kathrine Windfeld and Peter Flinth, both with new Swedish films, Agent Hamilton: In the Interest of the Nation [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile
]
and Nobel’s Last Will [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
; Henning Carlsen (with his Danish-Mexican Gabriel García Márquez film Memories Of My Melancholy Whores), Mads Brügger (The Ambassador); Finnish director Timo Vuorensola, producer Tero Kaukomaa (Iron Sky [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tero Kaukomaa
interview: Timo Vuorensola
interview: Timo Vuorensola
film profile
]
).

During this year’s Filmfest, Norwegian director Sara Johnsen was on stage at the Gimle Kino to receive the Arne Skouen Honorary Prize, an annual €13,500 award given by the Norwegian Film Institute, Oslo Municipal Cinemas and local distributor, SF Norge AS.

”In her films Johnsen has shown a special talent and a strong and personal voice,” the jury declared, and has also stated that her upcoming film All That Matters Is Past [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
will become one of this year’s most important Norwegian releases.

Starring Maria Bonnevie and Kristoffer Joner, €3.8 million Turid Øversveen production for 4½ Fiksjon is a love-crime depiction of the fatal reunion of two former lovers – in the autumn, in the middle of the forest, a canoeist finds Janne (Bonnevie) next to two dead men, weak but still alive.

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