While visiting a Christmas market in her Norwegian town, eight year old Mariann spots a talking teddy bear at a carnival game booth. However, when someone else wins it, she embarks on a quest to find the adorable bear that captured her heart.
A nurse gets into a dispute at work because she switches to speaking English when she gets nervous. A translator compromises her integrity when persuaded to translate a book she doesn't believe in. An elderly woman and her daughter are humiliated when offered a present of one million kroner from a relative. A warm and nuanced film about people who all mean well, but end up hurting one another.
It’s not easy to rebel when your dad wants to join the party... One day (in 1979), Magnus and his son Nikolaj hit the wall in their new terrace house in Rykkinn. Magnus is an architect, hippie and free spirit, a glaring exception in a community where equality and conformity is the norm. He always stands up for his son, supporting him unconditionally, even when Nikolaj decides to stop giving a damn.
Adapted from a series of short stories by Norwegian author Levi Henriksen, Bent Hamers Home for Christmas weaves together the lives of people struggling to find their way home on a Christmas Eve, beneath the colors of the Northern Lights. The plot unfolds during a few afternoon hours on Christmas Eve. The individual stories, which at times intertwine, are set in the small town Skogli. The characters in the stories cover a great range in age and life situations, representing both reconciliation with their own lives and strong frustration. Some show the will to understand and do something about their lives, while others have given up. Deeply tragic and melancholy aspects are mixed with humour and rather frivolous solutions.
Racial tension is running high in Bergen after a young black asylum seeker dies at the hands of the Police. Shortly afterwards, a right-wing politician is targeted by a gunman at a public rally and his wife is fatally wounded. Another member of the right-wing party, Marit Holm, approaches private investigator Varg Veum, insisting she is being stalked.
Odd Horton is dependable and contained: he's a train driver retiring after 40 years of service, living a simple life. His idea of adventure is to fly from one city in Norway to another. Starting on the night of his retirement dinner, Odd has a series of dislocating experiences: a boy insists that Odd sit by his bedside while he falls asleep; misadventure causes Odd to miss his last run; he witnesses an arrest; he assists an old man and makes a friend; he takes a trip with a blindfolded driver; he adopts a dog; he takes stock late one night at the roundhouse; he revisits his mother's disappointment in him. How should he live the rest of his life?
A woman moves into a young man's home and starts to run his life -- a process that makes him fall hopelessly in love with her.
Maria, an unconventional single mother, finds herself torn between two men, the successful shrink Fredrik and the 22-year-old paraglider Jonas. This all gets very complicated when her ex-husband Lasse returns, demanding full custody of the children.
Gunder Jomann lives in the small place of Elvestad. He prepares to receive his wife, Poona Bai, who he met and married in India. Gunder gets delayed when his sister is injured in a car accident and he sends the local taxidriver to transport her to him at the hospital but the chauffeur do not find her. The following day the body of a foreign woman is found on a meadow, few meters from Gunders house. Inspector Konrad Sejer tries to unravel the mystery and discoveres soon that the dead person is Gunder's wife, Poona. Who killed her, and why?
Therese has lost her father's love after her twin sister died in a drowning accident. She and her friend Allan kidnaps the daughter of her father's new wife.
13-year old Rikke sees Bea, the new girl in her class, as a challenge. After an endurance test to find which of them can lie longer in a circle of flames, they become friends. However, as a result of some unfortunate truths and half-truths, the friendship falters. Rikke feels that Bea has let her down, and resolves to continue the rivalry between them, but now in a less physical, more artful way. In addition we meet Rikke's elder sister Ninni, who has been in England to learn the language, and has had to leave her great love, a man twelve years her senior. The film is also about the problems Rikke encounters in fulfilling the expectations of those around her as she approaches womanhood.
"Så sjeldent som en virkelig morsom norsk komedie. Bildene og situasjonene bytter kjapt, så heng på! En grei historie om Stand-up-mannen som mistet tråden og kona tar over showet med dundrende suksess. Uforglemmelige scener, gnistrende skuespillere og haugevis av detaljer du kommer til å mores over. Humor, utroskap og en sprø familie. Se den! "
"Herman", based on Lars Saabye Christensen's novel of the same name, tells the story of the young boy Herman who suddenly loses his hair and becomes bald at the age of eleven. It follows him through what is a very difficult period in his life, through big mood swings and irrational behaviour until he finally learns to accept himself for who he is.
The aging and divorced writer Johannes Mørk relives intoxicating infatuation of his youth when his teenage daughter Eva, along with two young girlfriends, sweeps into his lazy southern home. Mørk has long revolved around his own problems with feelings of guilt for the failed marriage. Lone, one of his daughter's friends, makes a strong impression on him, and soon something will begin to develop between them. This awakening leads him to resume his relationship with his ex-wife. This especially affects his daughter Eva, who has been afraid to commit because she is a child of divorced parents.
One autumn day, Ivar goes to the Botanical Garden in Oslo to visit Maria who is the mother of a little girl named Tilla. Ivar is a child psychologist and had Tilla observed a few months earlier. Treatment for her was agreed upon, but Maria has not returned with Tilla. Now Ivar finds her sleeping under a tree in the garden, and he meets Maria bent over a microscope in the laboratory. Maria has become even more nervous and unbalanced than the last time he met her, because nothing has been "corrected" as quickly as she had hoped -- Tilla has not spoken now for a year and a half. Maria herself is on her way to being as closed off as her own little girl. Ivar persuades Maria to come to the pediatric psychiatric clinic with Tilla so they can begin her treatment. There she meets Mimi Backer. But neither does Mimi get Maria to open up about her experiences with Tilla. In the clinic's observation room, however, the first little flicker of light falls on the mystery...