THE FILM VERDICT: What made you want to tell this story in particular?
GUNNAR VIKENE: I’m a working-class man from Bergen, where the film takes place, and I’ve
been collecting stories about the war sailors since the early ‘90s, even before I thought I was
going to become a director. Two of my mother’s cousins died in the bombing of the school,
when the British attacked. I always found it strange how no one had told these stories before
and then, a few years ago, I was watching TV with my daughter. We saw images of what was
going on in Syria, and she commented that we live in a country where such things don’t
happen. I pointed outside the window and told her we had relatives who died right over there,
and she was shocked. And then the Norwegian government was discussing how many
refugees we could afford to welcome, even though we’re one of the richest countries in
Europe. I wrote the script as an act of anger, and then I submitted it to my producer, who had
always said she’d never make a war movie. She agreed to do this one, because it’s an anti-
war movie.
TFV: Most World War II films end in 1945, or shortly thereafter. Yours goes on until 1972.
Why did you make that decision?
GV: Because it’s not a film about the war itself, it’s about the consequences. And you rarely
see those in the movies. We had a premiere in Bergen, and it was quite moving to see the
reactions of the local audience.
TFV: Still, there are some impressive battle scenes. You used to work on a submarine. Did
that help with the realism of the sequences at sea?
GV: I hope so. My aim was to make it as real as possible.
TFV: That extends to the language. How common is it to make a film this big in the Bergen
dialect?
GV: Not at all. It’s also unusual to shoot a film this big in the Bergen region. Our production
company does mainly arthouse movies, and we certainly never set out to make the most
expensive Norwegian film ever.
TFV: Was it hard for the actors to master the dialect?
GV: It was for Ine Marie Wilmann, the female lead. She spent a year and a half learning the
dialect, because I wanted her to be able to improvise during filming. And she did such a good
job, we now only talk to each other using the Bergen dialect. If she calls me and starts using
her regular voice, I hang up. (laughs)
TFV: How difficult was it to make such an ambitious project during a pandemic?
GV: Very difficult. When we went to Malta for the first leg of the shoot, we didn’t even
know if they would let us into the country. And throughout filming, we had to live in cohorts [bubbles]:
I was only allowed to interact with the actors and the cinematographer, everyone else was
working far away from me. And this went on for eight months, in three different countries,
because we also filmed in Norway and Germany. Everyone got tested every single morning,
and luckily we made it to the end without a single positive test.
TFV: How has the international reaction been so far?
GV: We were worried about whether the film would translate or not, so to speak. The world
premiere in Toronto was quite daunting because the festival programmers told me it’s a pretty
tough crowd, but the screening went well, and the Q&A afterwards was great.
TFV: Amusingly, your composer also did the score for another International Feature Film
submission, Germany’s All Quiet on the Western Front.
GV: Yes, it’s quite funny, because he’s a bit conflicted about which film he should be rooting
for. All jokes aside, he’s a great composer and he did an amazing job on both projects. I wish
the best of luck to both films, but a bit more to mine. (laughs)
Interview conducted by Max Borg
