Four new productions: two feature films and two documentaries, have been greenlighted by Norway's Audiovisual Production Fund.

Christiania Film, the company that started in the local film business last year with the suprise box office hit Detector, was granted $1.2m for director Unni Straume's new project: Music For Weddings And Funerals is a romantic tragedy, starring Lena Endre, Bjorn Floberg and the Yugoslav composer Goran Bregovic, best known for his longtime collaboration with Emir Kusturica. Straume's other credits include Thrane's Method and Le Songe which premiered in Cannes in 1994. Shooting of Music will start on location in Oslo and Stockholm in April.

Production outfit Norsk Filmproduksjon AS was granted $903.000 for director Trygve Allister Diesen's (Isle Of Darkness) second feature film The Thief based on his own script, a drama about a divorced father who kidnaps his own daughter. The film will shoot this year to be readied for a February 2002 premiere.

Another production outfit, Motlys, was given the green light for two documentary projects by the Fund. Germany's Fred Kelemen (Abendland) will direct Eagle Child based on the true story about a girl who was kidnapped by an eagle on a remote Norwegian island in 1932.

Norway's leading commercial television channel is co-producing Motlys' All For Norway, which is to become both a feature length documentary and a ten part television series on national history to coincide with Norway's 100th anniversary in 2005. The documentaries will be directed by Sigve Endresen, Bent Hamer, Orjan Karlsen and Gunnar Vikene. The Fund will cover $821.000 of the project's $1.7m budget.