Norway

Magnus Marten’s Jackpot, based on a Joe Nesbø story, eschews goofy, excessive horror gags and builds on a tight script and solid acting to create a wonderfully twisted black comedy. Oscar Svendsen quickly discovers the challenge of proving his innocence after the police find him clutching a shotgun in a strip club surrounded by eight dead bodies.

Apatow-style humor and honest acting make this emotional Norwegian narrative a must-see Festival film. In The Almost Man, which won the top prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, follows Henrik and Tone, a happily married couple who are slow to grow up. When Tone becomes pregnant Henrik isn’t quite sure that he can play the role of the ideal husband, and when professional and romantic pressures became harder and harder to bear, Henrik retreats further into a juvenile state.

A happily married businesswoman inexplicably leaves everything behind to join an old lover in the cabin of their youth, but their joyous reunion is interrupted by a visitor from their past. All That Matters Is Past playfully skips back and forth through time, following a love story over several decades, and revealing what went so horribly wrong years earlier. This allegorical tale of innocence lost is breathtaking in its imagery and its plot twists, as the characters straddle a fine line of morality.

April 13 & 16 Screenings Have Sold Out
From the directors of the World War II resistance epic Max Manus — which became Norway’s biggest hit at the domestic box office and one of the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival’s most highly cherished films — the stirring epic Kon-Tiki recounts one of the great real-life adventures of the twentieth century.