"Difficult not to talk about it"

“I’ve known about this for a while, that this would happen,” says Hilmar Oddsson, the director of the film Á ferð með mömmu or Driving Mum . The film was nominated last night for the Nordic Council Film Prize at the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund, Norway.

“I’ve known about this for a while, that this would happen,” says Hilmar Oddsson, the director of the film Á ferð með mömmu or Driving Mum. The film was nominated last night for the Nordic Council Film Prize at the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund, Norway.

“It was extremely difficult not to talk about it,” Oddsson says with a shrug, but there was a strict ban on reporting several of the council’s nominations until today. “This is one of the greatest honors you can wish for as a Norwegian filmmaker. I did no film in the last twelve years when I was running the film school, and I took on the jury duties for this award, knowing the quality and the quality of the production,” says the director of the preparation of the nominations.

Greenland nominated for the first time

One film is nominated from each Nordic country, and each country has its own jury. “We choose our contribution, but not by election, but it’s just the jury that reviews the films from the year in question and chooses. The chairperson of that jury then participates in the work of the main jury, who will ultimately choose who gets the prize,” the director explains.

This year, Greenland is the first time with a film, and Oddsson believes it’s very exciting. “It’s never happened before, now there are six instead of five countries, which is very nice. I haven’t seen these films yet, I’m going to try to see something tomorrow, and I’m very excited to see this Greenlandic film because they haven’t made many films. I even understand that there’s an Icelandic cameraman working on it that I don’t actually recognize,” he says.

Despite not yet having seen what the competitors are putting forward, Oddsson has been informed that this year’s competition is very worthy and fierce, “that it’s a very strong year. But they may well say it every year, I don’t know,” he says with a laugh.

Haugesund festival will be at the Opera in Oslo October 31

The festival in Haugesund is far from new, “I first came here in 1986 with the movie “ Eins og skepnan deyr ” or How the beast dies,” Oddsson tells a journalist who was twelve at the time but remembers the film. “I came here with " Tears of Stone ", too, this festival has probably been founded sixty-something or seventy, it’s at least that old,” he continues.

The Haugesund festival is a kind of pre-promotion of the films, but the actual nomination will be at the Opera in Oslo on October 31. “And then I will know nothing until the results are announced. It’s just like the Oscars and you get all the emotional buzz at the moment,” says director Hilmar Oddsson.