Norway’s State of Happiness will premier at new Cannes TV festival
The story about how oil changed Norway and the Norwegians is one of the 10 selections for the first Canneseries TV drama festival between 4-11 April
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Norwegian pubcaster NRK and production company Maipo`s State of Happiness (Lykkeland), an 8x45min series about the Norwegian oil adventure, is among the 10 high-end productions selected (from 130 entries) for the first Canneseries TV drama festival between 4-11 April, partly coinciding with the MIPTV global TV and digital market 9-12 April, which is attended by 10,500 industry professsionals.
Only Nordic selection
The Maipo Film production by Synnøve Hørsdal and Ales Ree is the only Nordic selection for the programme, where it will compete with series from Germany, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Israel, USA, Mexico and South Korea. Two episodes from the series will be screened in Cannes on 10 April; NRK will air the show from August-September.
The day the oil arrived
Written by Mette M Bølstad (Nobel) from a concept by Siv Rajendram Eliassen (Acquitted), and directed by Petter Næss and Pål Jackman, State of Happiness is the story of how oil changed Norway and the Norwegians. It is set in the summer of 1969 in the small Norwegian coastal town of Stavanger, where international oil companies have been test drilling for years, but nothing has been found, and they are in the process of leaving.
Stavanger lives off fish, and the North Sea is emptying out – the town is in crisis. Then, on the night before Christmas, Phillips Petroleum finds the largest sub sea oil basin in history, and everything is about to change, also for the lead characters during the next three years: Anne Regine Ellingsæter (21), Amund Harboe (20) and Malene Wadel (19), all from Stavanger, and UK actor Bart Edwards.
Norwegian and international cast
The cast also includes Anna Hellevik, Pia Tjelta, Toril Torstensen, Christian Nymann, Per Kjerstad and US actor Jonathan Kay; the series, which has been supported by the Nordisk Film & TV Fond and Norway’s Zefyr Media Fund, will be internationally distributed by Denmark’s DR Sales – Danish pubcaster DR and Finnish pubcaster YLE have already been signed.