Out Stealing Horses will compete for Norway at the Berlinale
Berlinale 2019: Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland’s latest feature will have its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland’s 11th feature, Out Stealing Horses (Ut og stjæle hester), has been selected for competition at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival (7-17 February), where it will have its world premiere on Saturday 9 February.
Out Stealing Horses is Moland’s fourth contender for the Golden Bear – most recently he participated with In Order of Disappearance (Kraftidioten/2014) and Pretty Kind of Man (En ganske snill mann/2010). His own English-language remake of In Order of Disappearance will be released in the US on 27 February as Cold Pursuit, an action-drama-thriller starring Emmy Rossum, Liam Neeson and Laura Dern.
An impressive achievement!
"To be included in the main competition in Berlin is among the highest awards a film can get," said Stine Helgeland, head of Communication, Insight and International Relations at the Norwegian Film Institute. “Moland is one of the few who has done this four times, and with Out Stealing Horses he has made a film that both touches us on a deep human level, and impresses us visually and productionwise- another proof that we are making world-class films in Norway. It is good timing that Out Stealing Horses will unspool in the Berlinale competition, since Norway is this year’s Country in Focus with its own Norway House opposite the European Film Market, and later will be in the spotlight at the Frankfurter Buchmesse (16-20 October), the world’s biggest trade fair for books.”
From book to movie
Scripted by Moland from Norwegian author Per Petterson’s 2003 novel, which became an international bestseller – it has been translated into 50 languages and sold more than one million books – the film follows 67-old widower Trond, who lives in his newly-found loneliness, until he discovers he as a neighbour, a man he knew in the summer of 1948, when he turned 15. Then Trond’s father prepared him to shoulder his forthcoming betrayal and disappearance, and he himself grew up and met a woman he yearned for – the same woman his father was preparing to spend his life with.
“Out Stealing Horses is a work filled with passion from a large group of people - an exploration of the universe and the fascinating tone of a story full of tactile observations and life-changing dramatic events. For a film from a small nation like Norway - in Norwegian - in the Berlinale main competition provides a fantastic opportunity internationally. I look forward to sharing the film with the public in Berlin and in Norway” (where it will be launched on 8 March), said director Hans Petter Moland.
With a cast of Jon Ranes, Stellan Skarsgård, Bjørn Floberg, Tobias Santelmann, Pål Sverre Hagen, Gard B. Eidsvold and Danica Curcic, Out Stealing Horses was produced by Håkon Øverås and Turid Øversveen for Norway’s 4½ Fiksjon. Nordisk Film Distribusjon handles local distribution, while TrustNordisk is in charge of international sales. The film, which is Norway’s eighth contender for the Golden Bear, has received development and production support from the Norwegian Film Institute.