When Norwegian producers Yngve Sæther and Hege Hauff Hvattum of Motlys Film stood on stage with director Dag Johan Haugerud at Goteborg’s Nordic Film Market in 2023 and told the industry they were going to make a trilogy titled Sex, Dreams, Love, many thought they were overstretching themselves.
“Pretty early on, we were bold in our ambitions because we felt that the scripts were so good and that Dag Johan was such an accomplished director,” Sæther recalls. “We said, ‘We are going for Berlin, Cannes and Venice’ in that order.”
Justifying their confidence, the third film in the trilogy, Dreams (Sex, Love) won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale last week. This continues the charmed festival run that Motlys has had over the previous decade.
Founded in 1983, the company has become one of Norway’s pre-eminent production companies, making a splash in Cannes over the years with films including Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st and Louder Than Bombs and also winning best series at Canneseries in 2024 with their political TV drama Power Play.
Berlin started the ball rolling for the Sex, Dreams, Love trilogy in 2024 by programming Sex in Panorama. But then Cannes turned down Dreams. “I would say their loss,” Sæther reflects today.
Venice, though, took Love – the first Norwegian film in 28 years to be selected for the main competition. The director’s previous feature, Beware Of Children, also screened on the Lido in 2019 in Giornate degli Autori.
Dreams was invited to Toronto last September but the producers took the “tough choice” to wait for Berlin where the film was unveiled last week, becoming the first Norwegian movie to win the festival’s main prize.
One key consideration was that TIFF was so close to Venice that Love and Dreams would risk “cannibalising” each other. This meant, however, that Dreams was released in Norway in October by Arthaus without having been in a festival beforehand.
After all the festival exposure, the trilogy has been selling strongly – but as the producers remember, it wasn’t that straightforward initially to find the right sales agent. None of the Nordic outfits would commit to the trilogy. In the end, they plumped for Berlin-based outfit m-appeal.
“It was vital for the project that one sales agent would take all three of them,” Sæther says. “It was [m-appeal’s] connection to the scripts, to the stories, to the themes that Dag Johan wanted to tell…and also that they could commit to all three films. M-appeal came with the strongest passion about the project and that is so vital because there is so much work.”
Even after getting into Berlin, there were unexpected hurdles. The filmmakers discovered their movie had the same English-language title as Michel Franco’s Golden Bear contender Dreams starring Jessica Chastain.
“When you have that kind of star quality, I guess other underdogs have to change but it was a bit tricky,” Hvattum says of having to tweak the English title to Dreams (Sex Love).
Distributors are now taking different approaches to releasing the films in their territories.
“You can watch them in whatever order you want. From Johan’s point of view and our point of view, it has been Sex, Dreams, Love, but it is not a problem to mix them up,” Hvattum observes.
Strand Releasing acquired US rights to the trilogy and is expected to release the films in April, May and June.
Road movie
Motlys is now preparing a new feature with Haugerud who is currently writing the screenplay. The director describes it as a “road movie” while the producers say, enigmatically, “It has got to do with trying to be a good person.”
The company has plenty of other projects in the pipeline. It is taking a shot at the family market with Brightly Shining (original title Stargate - A Christmas Story), written and directed by Ida Sagmo Tvedte, which is now completed and had market screenings in the EFM via sales agent Reinvent.
The story follows a daydreaming young girl living with her older sister and their alcoholic father in a small apartment in Oslo. Hvattum is producing and Sæther is executive producing. They describe Brightly Shining as a Norwegian equivalent to My Life As A Dog that they hope will appeal to both children and adults.
The film is based on a bestselling novel of the same name by Ingvild Rishøi, chosen by Oprah Winfrey as one of the most moving books of 2024. The producers hope this – and a championing of the novel by singer Dua Lipa – will boost the visibility of the film.
The Norwegian release is set for October through SF Studios.
Rikke Gregersen’s Almost There is in pre-production and is expected to shoot in September. Hvattum and Sæther are pitching it as “a razor-sharp generational portrait” about a young woman in her late 20s, struggling to cling to her youth.
The Golden Bear for Dreams (Sex, Love) comes at a time when the Norwegian film industry is thriving.
“It is good times for Norwegian cinema right now,” Sæther agrees. “We support each other. We push each other. The Norwegian Film Institute supports us and we tend to make different movies in different genres… it is fun to be part of.”
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