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CANNES 2015 Competition / Norway

Norway competes at Cannes for the first time in 36 years

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- Joachim Trier’s Louder Than Bombs will be the only Nordic entry in the main competition at the Cannes International Film Festival

Norway competes at Cannes for the first time in 36 years
Jesse Eisenberg and Devin Druid in Louder Than Bombs

The last time that Norway got to compete at Cannes was when Hallvar Witzø’s short Yes We Love was invited last year – but the selection of Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s Louder Than Bombs [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Trier
film profile
]
means that this is the first Norwegian contender for the Palme d’Or since Anja Breien’s Next of Kin (which took home the Ecumenical Prize in 1979).

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Unspooling from 13-24 May, the showcase on the Côte d’Azur had this year received 6,000 submissions for the programme – only 17 have so far entered the main competition, which was announced today (16 April). No other Nordic film qualified for a slot. 

Shot in New York with an international cast comprising Gabriel Byrne, Isabelle Huppert, Jesse Eisenberg and Devin Druid, Louder Than Bombs continues Trier’s collaboration with writer-director Eskil Vogt, who has co-written his films since the short Procter (2002), including the award-winning Reprise [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Trier
interview: Karin Julsrud
film profile
]
(2006) and Oslo, August 31st [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Trier
film profile
]
(2011). 

Three years after photographer Isabelle Reed (Huppert) has been killed, apparently in a car accident, her widower Gene wants to tell their youngest son what really happened, and he asks their eldest son Jonah to come home and help. But instead, Jonah turns against him – he has his own picture of his mother and is not willing to give it up in this drama of breakaway and unity in a modern family. 

“Although it started in Oslo several years ago as a stack of papers with ideas that Vogt and I were discussing, we always knew we wanted to make an international film – and we are very excited to present it at Cannes, which is really the perfect place for it to meet the world,” Trier explained.

Norwegian producer Thomas Robsahm staged the project for Motlys with French producer Alexandre Mallet-Guy, of Memento Films, Denmark’s Nimbus Film, and US companies Animal Kingdom, Beachside Film and Bona Fide, with support from the Norwegian Film Institute. SF Film will release Louder Than Bombs domestically in October, while France’s Memento handles international sales.

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