UK take of Norwegian terror at the Toronto Film Festival
UK director Paul Greengrass’ 22 July, about the 22 July, 2011, attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utøya, selected for a Special Presentation
UK director Paul Greengrass, whose United 93 (2006) about one of the planes hijacked in the US on 11 September, 2001, was nominated for an Oscar, will screen his 22 July at a Special Presentation during the 43rd Toronto International Film Festival between 6-16 September. His drama-thriller depicts the terror attacks in Norway on 22 July, 2011, through one of the survivors’ physical and emotional journey.
The deed
On 22 July, 2011, 32-year-old Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik detonated a bomb in the capital of Oslo at 15:26. Then he went by ferry to the island of Utøya in the Tyru Fjord, where the Norwegian Labour Party had organised a summer camp for teenagers. He began shooting at the participants, and when he was seized by police at 18:32, he had killed a total of 77 people and wounded 319.
The book
Based on Norwegian author Åsne Seierstad’s book One of Us (En af os), Greengrass has reconstructed the attacks and the response to them for the film, shot in the UK with a Norwegian cast. Originally titled Norway, the Scott Rudin-Gregory Goodman-Eli Bush production for Little Lord Productions was backed by €1.8 million from the Norwegian Film Institute’s incentive programme to attract international projects.
Picked up for distribution by Netflix, starring Thorbjørn Harr, Anders Danielssen Lie and Jon Øigarden, 22 July was world-premiered on Wednesday, 5 September at the Venice International Film Festival, where Nordic critics agreed it was not Greengrass’ best film till now, still it had certain qualities.
One of them was the acting, especially Danielssen Lie in the role of Brehvik and Jonas Strand Gravli as one of the survivors, although the film’s English-language dialogue according to the critics does not feel natural to the Norwegian actors througout all the scenes. From the international reviews:
”An absorbing, thought-provoking exploration of how individuals and a society try to rebuild in the wake of terrorism, 22 July shuns sensationalism in its portrait of Norway’s devastating 2011 attacks that left 77 people dead,” wrote Tim Grierson in Screen International.
”As with his United 93 and Captain Phillips, filmmaker Paul Greengrass has taken a horrifying true story and brought sober perspective to it — in the case of 22 July, suggesting that a community’s response to terror can be as critical to a democracy as the attacks themselves.
“These are difficult times,” Lippestad (a Norwegian lawyer) announces solemnly at one point. The film’s power stems from its acknowledgement that those times may be with us for a while, constantly testing our resolve in the face of such evil,” he concluded.
Other July 22 stories
Behring was sentenced to the maximum 21 years in custody for terror, and his one-man warfare has so far inspired four films – besides Greengrass’, Norwegian director Erik Poppe’s U – July 22 (Utøya 22. juli), which was premiered at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, Swedish director Carl Javér’s documentary, Reconstructing Utøya (Rekonstruktion Utøya), and 22 July, a six-part television series by Norwegian writer-directors Sara Johnsen and Pål Sletaune, currently in production for pubcaster NRK.
Other films in Toronto
Norwegian films screening at the Toronto International Film Festival include writer-directors Tuva Novotny’s Blind Spot (Blindsone), Camilla Strøm Henriksen’s Phoenix (Føniks) in the Discovery Section (for New Talent) and Bobbie Peers’ To Plant a Flag in the short film programme.