TrustNordisk has sold “Loveable” to Estin Film for Lithuania and Estonia, Cinemania Group for the former Yugoslavia and September Film for Benelux.
The film, directed by Lilja Ingolfsdottir, making her feature debut, premieres at Karlovy Vary Film Festival on Tuesday.
It’s produced by Thomas Robsahm (“The Worst Person in the World”) and Nordisk Film Production. In September, it picked up the Best Nordic Project Award at the Finnish Film Affair.
“I wanted to see how far I could go and how brave I could be,” Ingolfsdottir told PvNew.
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“With the actors, and everyone else involved in the process, we had to be emotional, available and transparent. Now, I’ve heard from people that it wasn’t like watching a film. They felt like they’ve been through something transformative.”
In the story, Maria (Helga Guren) is shocked to discover her husband Sigmund (Oddgeir Thune) wants a divorce. She’s devastated, but it also allows her to finally face her biggest traumas and fears.
Heidi Gjermundsen Broch and Marte Solem also star.
“There are thousands of traditional love stories about couples. We have high divorce rates, but before a person leaves, something must have happened. What is that? We have such a hard time trying to connect,” the Norwegian director said.
“At first, Maria blames him – she is being the victim. Then, she opens up and that’s the strength of this character. She’s able to start a dialogue with her pain. I think that every crisis is there to make us more aware of ourselves. She realizes this is actually a gift. She can finally get rid of things that used to hinder her.”
Ingolfsdottir was tired of certain portrayals of women in films.
“They are either victims or they have a black belt in karate. These are the only options,” she said with a laugh.
“I just wanted to have a flawed, multilayered female character who is a human being like all of us. She’s empowering herself by looking at her dysfunctionality and she’s brave enough to acknowledge her patterns. She doesn’t need superpowers.”
What Maria needs, however, is to admit to herself that she wants other people by her side.
“It’s brave to say: ‘I need you.’”
“We keep saying we are strong, independent women and we don’t need anyone. But she wants to reach out to others, realizing you can’t connect with anyone else unless you connect with yourself first.”
While not exactly autobiographical, the film reflects some of her own past struggles, said Ingolfsdottir.
“It’s not based on my real life, but I am definitely using my experience as well. For me, art and my own self-exploration is the same process. I can’t separate these things. Plain storytelling has never interested me,” she noted.
“[In 2018] I made this short ‘Show Me Your Original Face Before Your Mother and Father Were Born.’ It was an experiment. I put a camera in the room and invited 30 people, perfect strangers, and asked them to say one sentence to the camera. The sentence was: ‘I love myself.’ Some wanted to escape, some wanted to cry.”
The experience was one of the starting points for “Loveable,” where her protagonist echoes their words.
“Now, Maria says it in front of the mirror and it’s such an intimate thing to do. It affects the audience, too. It feels like she’s looking directly at you and this is the scene when most people open themselves fully to the film. We are so scared of intimacy in our society, of connection, but we also need it so deeply.”
