u – july 22 c agnete brun

Source: Agnete Brun

Andrea Berntzen

TrustNordisk has added more sales on Berlin’s most-talked-about title, Erik Poppe’s U-July 22. 

The latest deals on the Berlinale Competition title include to Germany/Austria (Weltkino); Benelux (September Film); Poland (Aurora); Greece (Feelgood); and Baltics (Estin). 

As previously reported, the film has also sold to Latin America (California), China (HGC), Korea (Cinema de Manon), Hungary (Vertiog), Slovakia and Czech Republic (Film Europe) and Portugal (Alambique).

Poppe’s story is set on July 22, 2011, when 500 youths were at a youth Labour summer camp on Utoya island outside Oslo, where they were attacked by terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.

Poppe very much wanted to avoid focusing on Breivik – in the film he is not named and just glimpsed as a passing figure – as he wanted to tell the story from the point of view of the youths.

The filmmaker asked actual survivors of the attack serving as consultants on the film. 

One survivor, Ingrid Endrerud, was at the Berlinale this week and said at a press conference, “The core is to tell the story because it has been impossible to tell. To capture and show this was right – [extremism] is hate in the purest form, and we have to stand against it. This film is historical, and is important to tell.”

Siv Rajendram Eliassen and Anna Bache-Wiig wrote the original screenplay. Finn Gjerdrum and Stein B Kvae produce for Norway’s Paradox. Nordisk Film will distribute in Norway on March 9.