Loving contemporary portrait of parents in crisis. The babies in the film are the most stable ones.
We follow a group of babies and parents during a year in their Scandinavian maternity leave. Some of them have bigger plans, they want to move to the ocean and buy new properties. Some are stressed. What can babies eat? Cucumber? Is it ok with salmon?
One father, Jon, is working as a teacher. The principal at his school call parents to keep their children home so they won’t drag down the scores on the National test.
The grown-ups are under pressure. They fill out forms on anxiety symptoms and divorce-papers. Sinking down in therapy-chairs and lying in eachothers couches. The fragile nuclear-family structures are cracking down and other grown-ups step up to help.
The babies are there, present in every picture, witnessing.
The director about her film:
This film was born out of three circomstances:
1. We started ALTERNATIVET. Together with Guro, Magnus and Katja we started up a platform where we help each other produce our films.
2. I had a baby and I wanted to make a film without being separated from him.
3. My daughter was about to start school and I read books about how the school system in Norway has developed lately.
I built a setting: A maternity leave group - something we have in Norway. Parents are put together in groups based on where they live and they meet to socialise with their babies during the first year. We filmed for 3-5 days with 2-3 months in between and I developed the stories along the way. The cast is a mix of actors and non-actors. Most of them are the real parents of the babies in the film. Except for my baby - I placed him in the arms of my wonderful colleague Magnus Mork who plays his father DAVE.
In ALTERNATIVET we commit to each project. When we've decided to do it we find a way to do it and finance it together often with our own worktime in the beginning. This gives us so much in the process and makes us so directly involved. We take on different roles in each other's films - whatever the project needs.
There is a lot of stressed people in WE ARE HERE NOW. They find themselves in claustrophobic relationships and work structures forcing them to do things they don't want to do. Many of them have projects and ideéas on how things should be and it's hard to see what's actually there. The babies. The other people.
