After making her feature
debut with the well-received film “Limbo” in 2010, Norwegian filmmaker Maria
Sødahl is making a comeback with “Hope,” a drama based on what she went through
after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer years ago.
Set
to world premiere at Toronto in
the discovery section and repped by TrustNordisk,
the personal movie is a two-hander starring Andrea Bræin Hovig (“All the
Beauty”) as Anja, a strong forty-something woman who is an accomplished
professional and runs the household of her extended family, including the
children she had with Tomas (Stellan Skarsgård) , with whom she has lived for
almost two decades. When she gets a terminal brain cancer diagnosis the day
before Christmas, their life breaks down, exposing neglected love.
“I had the urge to tell my story, and at the
same time my aim was to make a personal but not a private film. It´s about what
happens when someone faces a death threat. Everything becomes more clear and
the communication very direct, the incertitude, the subtext. It all disappears”
said Sødahl, who took a long break from filmmaking to take care of her health.
Although “Hope”
deals with a woman struggling to survive a deadly cancer, Sødahl said the movie
was about love rather than death. “It´s about being able to receive and give
love, it´s about modern love with these two people who get a second chance to
get to know each other, and it´s about loving life,” said the director.
“Hope” also depicts the health system in Norway - all
the doctors in the film are all played by real doctors. “We casted about 100
doctors. It was important for me to show that they´re real people,” said
Sødahl, adding that a surgeon whom she dealt with when she was sick read the
script to double check the medical facts.
Sødahl, whose 2010 film “Limbo” won her best director
at Montreal along with 10 Amanda (Norway´s equivalent to the Oscars)
nominations, said she was not inspired by any particular film while making
“Hope” since this was such a personal project, but she did think of Michael
Haneke´s “Amour” at an early stage.
“In ‘Amour,´ Haneke tells the story of this couple in
a very contained way, there is no drama going on elsewhere and the suspense is
maintained throughout the film. You experience the film with your guts, like in
my film it´s not sentimental and there is no place for grief,” said Sødahl.
Since the film unfolds between Christmas and New Years´ Eve, the story is
structured like a “countdown.”
Even though Bræin Hovig and Skarsgård are in almost
every shot together in the film they had not met before the start of the
rehearsals. “It was like a blind date. It was very frightening for the three of
us but I was quite confident that they would get on,” said Sødahl. “They´re an
odd couple, she´s feisty and petite (and high on steroids), he´s tall and
phlegmatic. But that oddness brings out a lot of energy and chemistry between
them.”
Sødahl said that in contrast with the grave subject
matter of the film, the atmosphere on set was much lighter thanks to Skarsgard
and Braein Hovig who have a “great sense of humour.” “They would find humor in
some of the human inadequacy and absurd situations depicted in the film.”
Next up, Sødahl is developing “Man Watching” (working
title), a coming-of-age film following a young European girl in her early 20´s
who travels alone to Mexico to find her own identity. While there, she
meets strangers, experiments new things, and reinvents her own persona.
“The idea for ‘Man Watching´ came about by reflecting
on how young people move around today in a globalized world, compared to my own
experience as a traveler in the mid-eighties,” said Sødahl, adding that she
believes in “the importance of ‘going out there,´ both to get to know your own
roots and in order to find out who you are.”
Thomas Robsahm's company Amarcord is co-developing
“Man Watching” with Sødahl, in cooperation with Oslo Pictures.
Robsahm produced “Hope” at Motlys, in co-production
with Zentropa Sweden, Film i Väst and Oslo Pictures, with support from the
Norwegian Film Institute, Swedish Film Institute, Nordic Film and TV Fund,
Eurimages, and in cooperation with SF Studios, TrustNordisk,
NRK, SVT, Amarcord, Talent Norge and Storyline Studios.