Other local productions include Company Orheim, 1980s coming-of-age story.

Norwegian cinema is back to normal. After last year launching a whopping 40 new features, partly because private producers wanted to profit from changes in the public subsidy system, the Norwegian Film Institute today at Oslo’s Film House introduced the local releases for the spring season: a total of 10 productions, including a documentary.

Selling 2.9 million tickets to control 24.5% of the market in 2011 – the best result in 36 years – “Norway will also this year have films which will excite the international audiences,” said Stine Helgeland, the institute’s executive director of promotion and international relations.

”Norway is certainly worth gambling on – it has got some fucking good directors,” added Danish producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen, in Oslo to present his and Valerie Edwina Saunders’ first project for Zentropa Norway, Petter Naess’ Into the White (aka Comrade) [pictured], set for a March 9 opening.

With an international cast of Florian Lukas, David Kross, Rupert Grint, Lachlan Nieboer and Stig Henrik Hoff, Naess’ World War II epic follows a German bomber and an English fighter crew seeking shelter from the Norwegian winter in the same isolated cottage in the fjells, after they have grounded each other in an aircraft battle. They soon realise their antagonism is hard to maintain.

Arild Andresen, whose The Liverpool Goalie (Keeper’n til Liverpool) scooped 11 awards on its international tour after the Berlinale, will be ready with his second feature, Company Orheim (Kompani Orheim), from Tore Renberg’s novel, on March 2. The mid-1980s family and coming-of-age drama set is produced by Yngve Sæther and Sigve Endresen for Motlys.

SF Norge and Norwegian-Danish production company CineMiso’s Varg Veum thriller franchise is drawing to a close, after having – by Aug 2010 – sold 500,000 cinema tickets and 700,000 DVDs. The last two titles, Erik Richer Strand’s The Dead Have It Easy (De døde har det godt) and Trond Espen Seim’s Cold Hearts (Kalde hjerter), will be out on Jan 20 and March 30, respectively.

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