After impressing at Sundance Film Festival, these Norwegian documentaries are now headed for Kosmorama!

The Sundance Film Festival took place from January 18 to 28, and this year, three Norwegian films were part of the lineup. The two documentaries, "Ibelin" and "Ukjent landskap," collectively received three prestigious awards in the World Cinema Documentary category. We are proud to announce that both films will be featured at Kosmorama from 4.-10 March.

The documentary film about Mats Steen, directed by Benjamin Ree, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, followed by a Norwegian premiere at the Tromsø International Film Festival the next day. At Sundance, the film received the following two awards:

Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary
Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary

The jury had the following to say about Ibelin winning the Directing award
"The director found a powerful form to fit the story, excavating a wondrous and enchanting secret life with real skill, to give us deep insight into the mind of the main character, opening up a world that was previously locked away. We love the film’s playful inventiveness, its emotion, and depth. The Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary goes to Benjamin Ree, with Ibelin."

Ibelin also received the audience award at Tromsø International Film Festival.

The film will have its theatrical release on 8. March, and we are delighted to welcome you to an exclusive early screening on Tuesday, 5. March at Kosmorama. After the screening on the 5. March journalist Anne Dorte Lunås will lead a conversation between the films director Benjamin Ree and researcher Beate Hygen.

About the film:
Mats Steen was born with a rare disease that caused a gradual loss of muscle strength. He died in 2014, at the young age of 25. Trude and Robert, his parents believed he led a lonely life in a wheelchair. However, after his death it turned out that Mats had friends all over Europe through the online game World of Warcraft, where he went by the name Ibelin.

With the Steen family's private video recordings, animated reenactments of the gaming logs, and interviews with family and online friends, this is a touching and original documentary about friendship that breaks barriers.

Director Benjamin Ree follows up his previous film, Kunstneren og Tyven (2020), with this powerful story about Mats Steen and everything he meant to the friends he met in the game.

Tickets will be available from 16. February.

The Norwegian documentary by Silje Evensmo Jacobsen also had it's world premiere at Sundance, and received the esteemed World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary.

Sundance had the following to say about the film
"Our jury was immersed in this story from start to finish. The film is embedded with deep humanism and a sensitivity and vulnerability that never veers into sentimentalism. The film is skillfully edited, beautifully filmed, and scored with intimate access inside a very special family. It’s rare to see classically vérité films of this caliber. The World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary goes to A New Kind of Wilderness."

About the film:
How can you move on after losing the one you love? On a small farm outside Kongsberg, a family lives an alternative life in nature, but the harmony ends when the mother is diagnosed with cancer and passes away. The four children pose different questions, and the father tries his best to assume the parental role that he and his wife used to share. As he processes his own grief, he also realizes that they may have to let go of all their dreams.

Previously, Silje Evensmo Jacobsen has been a creator and director of the TV series Team Ingebrigtsen, but with A New Kind of Wilderness, she has made a quite different family portrait – both in form and content. Moving towards an unknown future is like a long-distance race without a finish line, and it is all conveyed through questioning and contemplative gazes from the perspectives of both children and adults.

This is a powerful and touching documentary about life that must go on – but perhaps one must find new ways to live it. The film was one of two Norwegian documentaries selected for the prestigious Sundance Festival earlier this year.

Tickets will be available from 16. February.