The Norwegian Film Fund, which is shortly to celebrate its first birthday, is spreading its money widely in its latest funding round, backing two international projects as well as four local productions.

The $6.3m English language drama The Beautiful Country, starring Nick Nolte and Harvey Keitel and directed by Hans Petter Moland, has been has been granted $892,000. The film is a co-production between the newly established Norwegian production outfit Dinamo Story - co-owned by executive producers Peter Borgli and Tomas Backstrom - and Ed Pressman's company Sunflower Productions. Sony Pictures Classics, TF1 and Svensk Filmindustri are handling worldwide distribution.

The other international project is an as yet untitled film from Swedish director Kjell Grede. The $ 2.2m project is co-produced by Sweden's Sandrew Metronome AB and Norway's Friland and was granted $128,000 by the fund.

The fund, which will be hoping to discover another local hit like Elling, is also backing four Norwegian films which are set to roll this year.

Production outfit Happy Endings has been granted $1m for the $1.8m buddy comedy Buddy to be directed by Morten Tyldum.

A $423,000 feature-length documentary Weightless about local singer Kari Iveland received $204,000 from the fund. Sigve Endresen is directing and producing the film through his company Motlys. Weightless will premiere at the Haugesund film festival in August.

Production outfit Paradox Produksjoner has received funding for children's film Little Miss Norway. The $ 1.8m feature to be directed by Hilde Heier received $1m by the fund.

The $828,000 Wilderness, a horror film produced by Spleis Film and directed by newcomer Pal Oie, got $204,000 from the fund.

Topics