NORWAVE at Transilvania IFF: Norway conquers Cluj with films, concerts and special guests

NORWAVE promotes the cultural dialogue between Norway and Romania and proposes an exchange meant to abolish social differences and cultural barriers and to open doors for Romanian film industry towards a potential success model.

The tribute section 3X3 makes room for a very particular brand of Norwegian humor which can be found in the works of a similarly particular filmmaker, Bent Hamer, famous for his film Factotum, based on a novel by Charles Bukowski. He will attend the screening of his most recent film, 1001 Grams, Norway’s submission to the 2014 Academy Awards, a charming comedy about a researcher who studies “the perfect weight of a kilogram” and reevaluates her own life. 3X3 will also return to the beginnings of his career, hosting the screening of his first film, Eggs, which premiered in 1995, in Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, and the screening of Water Easy Reach (1998), a meditation on cultural differences focusing on a young sailor which has many adventures while waiting in a Spanish harbor.  

Contemporary Norwegian music, be it jazz, be it post-rock, will be heard in abundance during Transilvania IFF. On Sunday, May 31, at 8:00pm, at the Students' Culture House (CCS), famed jazz pianist Tord Gustavsen will play alongside Afghan-German singer Simin Tander. On Tuesday, June 2, CCS will host a Norwegian Night. After the screening of Beatles, a charming adaptation of a best-seller about 1960s beatlemania, it’s time for Einar Stray Orchestra, a mini-orchestra of 5 young Norwegians, one of the most interesting musical acts of the past few years, with over 30 concerts all over Europe in 2014.

A special moment of this program will be the screening ofi Nine Lives, a war biography from 1957, nominated for an Oscar for the Best Film in a Foreign Language category and voted the best Norwegian film of all times by the local audience. Screenwriter Stig Frode Henriksen will come to Transilvania IFF to introduce the daring horror parodies Dead Snow 1 & 2 (2009 / 2014), in which a group of youngsters fight against Nazi zombies. Miss Julie, the most recent film direct by Liv Ullmann, Ingmar Bergman's muse and partner, recently launched in Romania by Independența Film, will also be screened. The film stars Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell and Samantha Morton. After Sundance, Anne Sewitsky’s new film after Happy, Happy, the disconcerting Homesick, about an incestuous relationship is another NORWAVE title.

Letter to the King comes with the Best Nordic Film Award (Goteborg 2014) and with five interconnected stories about Kurdish refugees which are allowed to visit Oslo for a day. Winner of the Label Europa Cinemas Award in Berlinale 2015, Out of Nature is “a striking self-portrait of an artist tormented by middle life crisis” (The Hollywood Reporter). Filmmaker Gunhild Magnor will bring to Transilvania IFF The Optimists, a documentary about an unusual volley team composed of women between 66 and 98 years of age who, after 30 years of training, prepare for their first match. The irresistible comedy Chasing Berlusconi and the surprising relationship story in Must Have Been Love complete the list of recent Norwegian films.

Two NORWAVE productions will be screened during EducaTIFF – the program of cinematic education for kids: Operation Arctic, a lesson in survival about three young people who arrive on an island where they are put in danger by storms and polar bears, and One Night in Oslo, a story about friendship between adolescents.

The project is financed by the EEA Grants and Norway Grants, through the Bilateral National Fund, managed through the Romanian Ministry for European Funds and presented in partnership with the Norwegian Film Institute.