07/03/2013 - There is a large span between 'feel-good' and 'feel-bad' entries at the 12th Norwegian showcase, which this year has 14 local productions in the programme

“I do not think this festival has ever had such a big spanbetween 'feel-good' and 'feel-bad' entries – from happily moving films such as Mission to Lars and Little World, to brutal depictions from the prisons of Afghanistan and of honorary killings,” said festival director Jan Langlo of Oslo’s Eurodok programme, which runs between March 13-17.

Organised by the Cinemateket/Norwegian Film Institute, the programme for the 12^th edition of the showcase includes 34 recent European documentaries, including “an unusually large number of 14 local productions”.

The 'feel-good' selections are launched by the festival opener, UK directors James Moore and James Spicer’s Mission to Lars, about a young man who lives in a care home in Devon, has Fragile X Syndrome and a dream: to come face to face with Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. One day Kate and Will decide to make their brother’s dream come true; they take him to the US, rent a mobile van and follow Metallica on its tour in the hope of setting up a meeting with Ulrich. Even Lemmy of UK heavy metal band Motörhead was allegedly crying when the watched the film.

Pakistan-Norwegian musical artist Deepika Thathall, aka as Deeyah, will show her Banaz – A Love Story, about the life and death of a young British-Kurdish woman, who was murdered in London 2006. At 17 she entered an arranged marriage to a man 10 years older than herself, who violently abused her; when she fell in love with another man and wanted a divorce, her family organised an honorary killing in return for the shame she had brought on it. Banaz had been to the police five times before her death.

Dutch director Jon Appel – and his producer, Carmen Cobos – will attend the screening of Wrong Time Wrong Place, about Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik’s rampage in Oslo, killing eight people, then on the island of Utøya, where he shot 69 people, mostly teenagers. Appel talked to survivors of the massacre and their bargain with fate – in the end coincidence calls the shorts. Ugandan refugee Ritah was pregnant and broke, but decided to go to Utøya at the last minute. Hakon took the trip despite theweather forecast, and barely escaped Breivik’s bullets. Natia knows that her friend Tamta would have survived if they had stayed together. Wrong Time Wrong Place opened last year’s IDFA Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam.