EXCLUSIVE: Norwegian production company Twentyone Pictures is growing its slate, as the company starts to work on features beyond those directed by founder Ellen Ugelstad.
It has attached key Norwegian cast to Ugelstad’s next film Acts Of Kindness, including Anne Marit Jacobsen, from Dag Johan Haugerud’s Dreams and Beware Of Children. Jacobsen will be joined by Oddgeir Thune and Marte Germaine Christensen.
Acts Of Kindness is in development, aiming for delivery in 2028. It is produced by Ugelstad and Jonas Bruun, who has joined Twentyone as a producer, with production support from the Norwegian Film Institute. Written by Ugelstad and Einar Sverdrup, the film is an ensemble drama about contemporary Scandinavian life, where the desire to do good unravels into conflict, comedy and crisis.
It is one of two projects Twentyone is pitching at New Nordic Films, the market that takes place from August 25-28 during the Norwegian International Film Festival Haugesund. Acts Of Kindness is in the event’s Co-Production Market strand, with Lene Berg’s true crime drama The Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, currently in post-production after a winter 2025 shoot, in the Works In Progress showcase. The Horsemen… will head to the Venice Gap-Financing Market after Haugesund.
Twentyone is also preparing Tove Undheim’s family drama One Brother Too Many, in which a nine-year-old Sara suddenly gets a five-year-old foster brother, throwing her life off-balance. She invents an alter-ego named Alfred, who can handle everything she cannot; but gradually Sara begins to disappear.
The film is in co-production with Germany’s Heimathafen Film and the Netherlands’ Flinck Film, aiming for delivery in 2029.
Also on the slate is Thomas Ostbye’s documentary Society, which looks at the complexities of human society and the structures that shape it, which is scheduled for 2028. Both titles have support from the Norwegian Film Institute.
Beyond that, Ugelstad will direct All That Floats With Rain, a music documentary tracing the evolution and world of genre-defying Norwegian act Highasakite, in co-production with the band and Norway’s Amarcord. Twentyone is aiming for a 2029 release.
Step forward
At 30m NOK ($3.2m), Acts Of Kindness will be the biggest-budget project to date for Twentyone, which has previously produced Ugelstad’s documentaries including CPH:DOX selection The Recovery Channel. “We’re taking a big step forward with that project, which means we have to find a new infrastructure and get more competence as a company,” said Ugelstad. “That’s why Jonas is coming in.”
Ugelstad is keen to apply the individualised production philosophy she has used for her own films, to productions by other filmmakers on which the company works. “When a director runs her own company, you have to prove yourself a lot more,” said Ugelstad. “I saw I was getting more funding for my own projects, and was approved as a company. Now that I have the structure, how can more directors make use of it and work with more autonomy and independence in their productions?”
“We are in a creative industry, but when it comes to being unconventional and not thinking in rigid ways, we’re not so creative.”
Examples of this innovation include regular evaluation sessions after every stage of production of a film. “We get the crew together and spend half a day just evaluating,” said Bruun. “How did the production go? What can we do differently, and take from this phase to the next? Everyone always says that’s something they want to do, but can’t because it’s too expensive.”
“It’s a device we should use much more,” said Ugelstad. “On a film production, you’re together, then everybody disappears and you never talk to them again. How do you build competence and learn from your mistakes? We’re missing a lot of information when we don’t do it.”
The producers aim to shoot Acts Of Kindness, which contains multiple story threads, in segments, with the number of segments depending on the amount of finance they are able to secure. “We can film one story, evaluate what can be improved both artistically but also in the team work in the production. Then go shoot stories two and three, then evaluate again, then shoot numbers four and five.”
The company is also co-producing Leslie Ortiz’s fantasy drama Libertinas with El Salvadoran producer Adriana Moran, through Norway’s Sorfond co-production scheme; and Carl Javer’s Looking Back At Love, produced by Sweden’s Vilda Bomben, about two rebels of San Francisco’s Summer of Love who prepare to battle Donald Trump’s America.
“It’s part of the strategy to have more international collaborations,” said Ugelstad. “In Norway we say ‘Norway is like a little duck pond’. It’s good to get out there and find your views.”
No comments yet