The director about his film:
Everybody Hates Johan is a story I have wanted to tell for a long time. It is personal and inspired by characters I know from growing up by the fjords and mountains of rural Norway. I grew up with more moose and badgers than people, in a place where everybody knows each other and where there are ancient conflicts between people that have been inherited through generations, with no one left knowing how it all began. Where I come from, there are characters who ride mopeds with moonshine in their tank, build homes without blueprints and chop down each other's trees when the conflict with their neighbor peaks. But it is also a place where people unwittingly shovel snow for each other, take care of those who are old and disabled, and always volunteers for community projects. I have taken this culture and its characters into the film's universe, and I believe Everybody Hates Johan mirrors a small town in Trøndelag county, as well as being globally recognizable.
My ambition is to tell something universal and epic, and yet intimate at the same time. And I feel Everybody Hates Johan does just that. It has been my desire to tell a comical story about being rejected and alone with a character whose impressive engagement to the ones he loves is unlimited.
Everybody Hates Johan comes from the heart and hopes to entertain as well as engage the audience emotionally.
