Norway's Oscar Submission Finalists

Tuesday

Sep192023

Tuesday, September 19, 2023 at 9:30PM

by Nathaniel R

Since we last discussed the Best International Feature Film four more official submissions have been announced from Egypt, Nepal, Slovakia, and Ukraine which you can read about on those charts (click on the country names) with several more to follow since oft-nominated countries like Spain, Italy, France, and Sweden are all announcing in the next few days. Tonight though, one of my favourite topics: Norway! As longtime readers know I once lived there and was once fluent in Norwegian. Those days are long long gone but I still like to watch Norwegian movies and television and try to turn off the subtitles on occassion.

Norway has announced three finalists for their submission: Let the River Flow, A Happy Day, and Songs of Earth...

Let the River Flow is a drama from Ole Glæver (of Out of Nature fame) about a girl hiding her identity to avoid racism and her journey out of that shame. It won three major Amanda Awards (Norway's top film prize) including Best Picture just last month so it has a good shot at being their submission choice. It opened back in February at home. It takes place in Alta (above the arctic circle) a town where, believe it or not, I once lived. It's in Norwegian and Sámi, the latter the language of the Sámi people indigenous to the northernmost regions of Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia. In an interesting footnote, Pathfinder (1987) Norway's second nomination in the Best International Feature Film category, was the first feature length film ever shot in a Sámi language. (It lost to Babette's Feast.) The Sámi people were once more commonly known in the West as "Laplanders" -- you'll see that rather than "Sami" used in contemporary-at-the-time articles about Pathfinder -- but that term is now considered offensive.

A Happy Day is a comedy from Kurdish-Norwegian director and two-time Amanda winner Hisham Zaman about three teenage friends hoping to escape their frozen mountain lives. It's the newest of these three films having just premiered at TIFF -- it hasn't yet opened in Norway -- so we won't be too surprised if it's named as the submission instead of the more obvious choice.

Songs of Earth is a documentary from Margreth Olin about her father and his mountain home which played TIFF shortly after its Norwegian release. The Norwegian title is actually The Fatherland which is a perfectly good title as is (and sounds more descriptive of the synopsis)! Olin was previously Oscar submitted for her best known feature, the character drama Angel (2010) about a young mother struggling with addiction.

Norway has been nominated for Best International Feature Film six times (Nine Lives, Pathfinder, The Other Side of Sunday, Elling, Kon-Tiki, and The Worst Person in the World) though they've yet to win. More on Norway's Oscar history here.