Trust the Norwegians for a quality genre film! This year sees a couple of genre movies also grabbing their own prestige Amanda nominations. Instituted in 1985, the annual Amanda award is the highest accolade given in Norwegian film industry.
The name of the award, “Amanda”, is derived from a song titled “Amanda fra Haugesund“. Supposedly the song refers to a real woman from the 1920s – a lone mother who made a living from selling liquor to sailors during the prohibition period. Skål to that!
The Amanda nominations
Pål Øie‘s Villmark 2 (eng. Dark Woods 2) gets nominations for Best Cinematography and Best Production Design. The films cinematographer, Sjur Aarthun, also shot the first notorious Villmark in 2003. The production design was by Martin Gant, who has previously worked – as amazing as it sounds – on Star Wars – The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and also on the excellent Norwegian genre pic Troll Hunter (2010).
Maria Bock gets a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role in the rape revenge thriller HEVN (eng. Revenge, 2015), which was also screened at Night Visions in Helsinki. Bock is a versatile actress who has previously appeared on Matthias Glasner’s Gnade (eng. Mercy, 2012) and Pål Sletaune’s horror pic Babycall (2011).
The Amanda awards will be given on the 26th of August at the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund.
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