(Oslo, August 31st is being distributed by Strand Releasing. It opens Friday in NYC at the IFC Center.) Joachim Trier’s follow-up to his much-loved 2006 debut, Reprise, begins with an audio montage of voices sharing their memories of the titular city: “I remember taking the first dip in the Oslo fjord on the first of May.” “I don’t remember Oslo as such, its people I remember.” “We moved to the city. We felt extremely mature.’” On the screen, stationary shots of empty city streets are followed by home movies—children at play, friends enjoying each other’s company—then back to the streets […]
In March, Joachim Trier introduced his second film, Oslo, August 31st, to an enthusiastic audience at the 2012 Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New Films series. The film focuses on Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie), a recovering drug addict who aimlessly roams the streets of Oslo trying to reunite with friends and family. Oslo, August 31st is a tremendous work featuring an intense yet understated performance by Danielsen Lie and exquisite cinematography by Jakob Ihre. During the post-screening Q&A, Trier explained that with his latest film, he wished to portray Oslo as a character – a city in constant change […]
Don’t be fooled: Paranoia, alienation, and irrepressible ghosts of the past are some of the common threads among the features in the 41st edition of New Directors/New Films. No one could mistake it for a series of frothy comedies or unchallenging genre fare: feel-good is hardly an operative term. What is unmistakable is that, to my mind, it remains the finest, most original film festival in New York. These mostly first and second films from around the world are edgy but accessible, fresh but polished. A combination of fiction, docs, and animation, they are not intended to soothe but rather […]
The Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art have announced the lineup for their annual New Directors/New Films festival, running March 21–April 1 in New York City. This year’s festival opens with Nadine Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now, which premiered last year at Cannes and is being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. Also screening this year are several Sundance alums, including Gareth Huw Evans’s The Raid, Terence Nance’s An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st, David Hamel’s How to Survive a Plague, and Mads Brugger’s The Ambassador. The full lineup is below. For […]
Select stories from our Winter Issue are now available. You can now read online our interview with Joachim Trier about his Sundance-bound sophomore effort, Oslo, August 31st, our joint interview with directors Braden King (Here) and Joshua Marston (The Forgiveness of Blood), and Kinetic Trailer co-founder Stephen Garrett’s comprehensive piece on crafting a winning trailer. Plus, Lance Weiler’s Culture Hacker column. The issue premieres later this week at Sundance, and hits stands shortly after that, but you can read it now on your desktop by subscribing to our digital issue. Learn more here.
Four titles have been added to the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Listed below, these films join latecomers in recent years like Miranda July‘s The Future and Lisa Cholodenko‘s The Kids Are All Right. We’re certain these filmmakers would be more than happy with just an ounce of the critical and box office praise those two films got (or any of this year’s Sundance entries for that matter). The 2012 Sundance Film Festival will take place Jan. 19-29. Find all the previous news so far on the fest here. PREMIERES Predisposed / U.S.A. (Directors & Screenwriters: Philip Dorling, Ron Nyswaner) — […]
Below is the press release announcing the projects for the Sundance January Screenwriters Lab. Los Angeles, CA — Sundance Institute has selected 12 projects for its annual January Screenwriters Lab, an immersive, five-day (January 13-18) writers’ workshop at the Sundance Resort in Utah. Participating independent screenwriters – drawn from around the world, including the United States, China, South Africa, and Europe – will have the opportunity to work intensely on their feature film scripts with the support of established writers in an environment that encourages innovation and creative risk-taking. Michelle Satter, Director of the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program, said, […]
For several people I talked to, my favorite film at Cannes became their favorite film at Toronto. Oslo, August 31 is Joachim Trier’s follow-up to his inspiring hit film, Reprise. That movie, a tale of youth and best friends and literature and longing and rock and roll, was smart, sophisticated and with an emotional arc like a great mix tape. It was also somewhat dazzling in its montage, using split-screen, freeze frames and a European post-punk soundtrack to make its story of young Norwegian literati one that felt like young adulthood everywhere. After several years working on a larger-scale American […]
We didn’t catch much of the glamour of Cannes this year, so here’s Nowness with parties, performance and some nice interviews with Michel Gondry and Joachim Trier. (Click on the headline if you don’t see the video.) Diary of Cannes on Nowness.com.
The Australian-born critic Shane Danielsen wrote an amusing piece for Indiewire about this year’s Berlin Film Festival. He compared the smell outside some of the screening rooms to that of sperm. I remember it being stinky, but not that particular odor. Shane is, however, a reliable source. One of two things at Cannes that really gets on my nerves is the smell inside the press screenings, especially those that take place at 8:30 a.m. The 5000-seat theater is packed. No pun intended, but these projections are the pits, the lower depths of hygiene. Maybe it’s time constraints or perhaps cultural practices, but you […]