Beloved, the opening film of the 54^th Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund, is a true Norwegian cultural treasure. Written by Nobel laureate in Literature Jon Fosse and directed by Erik Poppe, it took 30 years to finally see the light of day. We sat down with the filmmaker to ask him a few questions about his movie and his journey with the acclaimed playwright.

Cineuropa: Let’s go back to the beginning of the project. How did your and Jon Fosse’s film journey start?
Erik Poppe: It started many years ago, or I had better say that at first, it didn’t start at all. When I became aware of Jon’s work, in the late 1980s, I was living in Stockholm and studying filmmaking at the Dramatic Institute. He was still an unknown author at the time, but he did have a Swedish publisher. A few years later, he wrote a script which he sent to four or five directors, including Aki Kaurismäki and me. As I was already familiar with Jon’s writing, I could see it would make for a very good film. I replied to say that this was something I’d enjoy doing, but not right there and then, because I was busy with other projects. Meanwhile, Jon started writing stage plays and went on to become world-famous in his field, and my own career started taking off. In 2023, actually right before Jon got the Nobel Prize, we both said, “We need to do this now, once and for all.” It’s a powerful script and a story that the world needs right now. Without ever being cynical or dark, it tells the intimate story of two (or three) people who are very fond of each other, but who nevertheless struggle to have a functional relationship.

How did the collaboration work between you, the filmmaker, and him, the playwright?
The script was very well written, very Jon Fosse in tone. To me, it was absolutely crucial to retain this tone and experience in the film. We spent a lot of time reworking the text, a full year, I’d say, and made various adjustments to the script, which by this point had reached quite a respectable age – as had the two guys involved! Jon famously never gets involved in adaptations of his texts – it would simply be impossible, as he is one of the most staged playwrights in the world today. However, this particular script was important to him. And it didn’t grow out of another of his texts. It is entirely original and was written for the screen. As he will likely never write another script, you can imagine how grateful I am for his time. And it was great fun, fine-tuning this story together.

Fosse’s stage work has already been adapted for the screen, including in a film which did not make a great impression: Romuald Karmakar’s take on Nightsongs, which premiered at Berlin in 2004. The audience was laughing out loud during serious scenes, wondering if it was irony, but sadly, it wasn’t.
The Nightsongs film – which I will dare divulge is not a favourite of Fosse’s himself – suffered from being overly faithful to the original stage play. In my opinion, there are several other plays by Jon that are much better suited for the screen. What we have with Beloved is, of course, a full-on, out-and-out screenplay, but the spirit of Jon Fosse is unmistakably there.

You have two relative newcomers in the lead roles, Leo Magnus de la Nuez and Kristi-Helene Giæver Engeberg, but they do come across as fully equipped for the task. Both seem to have a decent level of stage experience. Was this – or perhaps even having some experience playing Jon Fosse’s work – a requirement during casting?
It was not. That being said, Kristi-Helene has indeed performed Fosse on stage in Bergen. What was important to me was to sit down with them and create the characters of Gerd and Asle jointly, instead of having them emanate from material Jon had written for the stage. What I also wanted was two actors with a personal connection to the region where the story takes place, Vestlandet, Western Norway, which is the case for the both of them. Despite only having played minor parts for the cinema before, both turned out to be just splendid. This – finding these great new talents – is very characteristic of what’s happening in Norway right now.

The film was originally launched as Bad Moon Rising [a phrase borrowed from a Creedence Clearwater Revival song]. What led you to change the title to Beloved?
The answer is very simple: it was a copyright issue. We wanted to use the song, but found out it would have been tremendously costly. After that, we didn’t want to use that title any more.