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Norwegian director Vibeke Løkkeberg is in Berlin with her Forum feature documentary The Long Road To The Director’s Chair, over 50 years after she starting filming it at the first International Women’s Film Seminar in West Berlin in 1973.

The event at theArsenal cinema theatreis now regarded as a key staging post in the origins of the feminist movement. Female participants, all working in different sectors of the media, were fiercely critical of the rampant sexism in the film and newspaper industries.

At the time the project was turned down flat by the national broadcaster. Now it is being turned into a television series.

Norwegian producer Anders Tangen, in Berlin with Vibeke Løkkeberg’s Forum: Special title The Long Road To The Director’s Chair, has joined North Film Distribution as general manager.

The company has been launched to showcase films from Northern Norway, including those by Sámi filmmakers and emerging talent.

“We are helping the filmmakers with the distribution of their films not only for cinema but VOD platforms and SVOD, especially in the international market,” said Tangen.

North Film Distribution been set up as a collective between Mattima Films Rein Film Finnmark, Lofoten Film Collective, and Hermetikken Kulturnæringshage.

Its upcoming Norwegian releases...

New features from Tatiana Huezo, Kirsten Tan and Stephan Komandarev are among the 35 projects selected for the 2025Berlinale Co-Production Market.

The 35 projects hail from 27 countries, and will participate in the market to find financing and production partners. The Berlinale has also programmed its Forum Special and Forum Expanded strands.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

Salvadoran-Mexican filmmaker Huezo will participate with her new project Galerna, produced by Mexico’s Pimienta Films. Huezo’s first fiction feature Prayers For The Stolenwon a special mention in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2021, and was Mexico’s entry for the international feature Oscar.

The Berlinale’s Co-Production Market has selected 35 feature projects for its 2025 edition, including new works from Tatiana Huezo, Kirsten Tan and Stephan Komandarev.

The 35 projects hail from 27 countries, and will participate in the market to find financing and production partners. The Berlinale has also programmed its Forum Special and Forum Expanded strands.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

Salvadoran-Mexican filmmaker Huezo will participate with her new project Galerna, produced by Mexico’s Pimienta Films. Huezo’s first fiction feature Prayers For The Stolenwon a special mention in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2021, and was Mexico’s entry for the international feature Oscar.

Norwegian director Hallvard Bræin’s action comedy Børning received both the jury and the audiences’ film prize at the ceremony in Haugesund’s Maritim HallScroll down for full list of winners

Norwegian director Hallvard Bræin’s feature debut, Børning – a local twist of Cannonball Run (1981), which became last year’s most popular Norwegian film, taking 381,648 admissions – was also the big winner at the Amanda awards ceremony in Haugesund on Saturday (Aug 15).

At the TV2 Norge televised presentation in Haugesund’s Maritim Hall, preceding today’s opening of the 43rd Norwegian International Film Festival, Børning received Amandas – Norway’s national film prizes - including Best Norwegian Feature, the People’s Amanda, Best Supporting Actor (Henrik Mestad) and Best Sound Design (Fredric Vogel, Petter Fladeby).

The frontrunner for the awards - Norwegian director Bent Hamer 1001 Grams (1001 gram), which has so far toured 25 international film festivals – was nominated in six categories, but won only Best Original Screenplay.

For the first...

Title: Tears of Gaza Director: Vibeke Løkkeberg Dated by the criterion of certain cinephiles (it premiered at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival) but still dispiritingly topical, director Vibeke Løkkeberg’s “Tears of Gaza,” a visceral documentary look at the 2008-09 Israeli bombardment of Gaza launched in retaliation for Hamas bombings of southern Israeli cities, is a shattering anti-war that pierces one’s heart. A tough watch even for those who believe they’ve seen it all, this subjective offering is a grim portrait of human atrocity and a cinematic evocation of the old protest song query: “War, what is it good for?” Løkkeberg and cinematographers Yosuf Abu Shreah, Saed Al Sabaa and Marie Kristiansen — apparently having smuggled [ Read More ]...

Suffer the Children: Causalities of War on Display in Norwegian Doc

Norwegian actress and director Vibeke Løkkeberg’s latest film, Tears of Gaza, is a visceral documentary depicting footage of the Israeli army bombing Gaza at the end of 2008 into early 2009. Perhaps more chilling and definitely more visceral than any fictional horror you’re apt to see, the salvaged firsthand footage of the bombings focuses on the women, children, and civilians slaughtered and maimed.

We loosely follow three young children, one young boy and two young girls, each having lost most or all of their family members in the bombings, witnessing first hand the slaughter of their loved ones. Losing track of the children, we get montages of deployed bombs, eradicated, burning buildings, charred bodies of kids dragged out of rubble like ragdolls. There’s absolute pandemonium with women and children screaming in the streets, lives wiped out before our eyes between blinks.

Title: Tears Of Gaza Nero Media Director: Vibeke Løkkeberg Screenwriter: Vibeke Løkkerberg Cast: Amira, Razmia, Yahya, and the people of Gaza Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 8/14/12 Opens: September 19, 2012 Granted: a documentarian has no obligation to be unbiased, to present both sides of an issue—as fans of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock and cheer. However, Norwegians Vibeke Løkkeberg, who wrote the script for “Tears of Gaza” and Terje Kristiansen who produced it, make no attempt whatever to show what provoked a series of attacks by Israelis against an area that is so woebegone that even Egypt had written off its former possession after Egypt’s conquest in the 1967 [ Read More ]...

Last night I had a lovely Scandinavian dinner with friends as we discussed our book club title "The Ice Princess" the latest best seller capitalizing on the super hot Scandinavian crime genre (oh what The Girl With/Who... has wrought!). I didn't like the book at all and the translation seemed clunky (or maybe that was the fault of the original prose?) but I find the whole trend vaguely hilarious since Scandinavian countries, to their vast collective credit, are not exactly known as hotbeds of crime! Returning home, what do I have in my inbox?, but the nominations for Norway's annual "Amanda" Awards. Don't you love unexpected theme days?

Norway had a record breaking year with 34 original films eligible for their own prizes. To give you a very general sense of the amount of films various countries make each year here's a handy graphic AMPAS provided for the films of...

The London Palestine film festival has simple but radical aims: to constantly push boundaries, disrupt our conventional understandings and make us see it all anew

The perilous art of choosing a film on Palestine for an international audience may appear fraught with elephant traps. Weighted down by more than 40 years of military occupation and 60 years of dispossession, and comprising the largest refugee population in the world, Palestine is a touchstone for passion and political engagement across the world. Is a film about it inherently too political, too ideologically rigid to enlighten, or indeed entertain? Do the unhappy politics of the place trump any chance of critical engagement on a film's artistic merit, or allow room for happy accident and serendipity in choosing a film?

The long-running London Palestine film festival, established at London University more than 20 years ago and held annually at the Barbican since 2005, arrived at a highly unexpected...