On November 11, Scandinavia House presents a special screening and director talk of Norway’s official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards: the “robustly classical, weatherbeaten” epic Growth of the Soil. This program takes place as part of our Films from the Fjords series.
Markens Grøde / Growth of the Soil
Dir. Hans Petter Moland | Norway, 2026 | 159 min
A stranger appears over the mountain, carrying little more than his determination. Isak (Herbert Nordrum, The Worst Person in the World), a man without a past, seeks a place to settle and carve life from the earth. High above the tree line, he finds a barren stretch of land, as unforgiving as it is full of promise. The land tests him to his limits, until he meets Inger (Asta Kamma August), a solitary woman shaped by resilience and quiet secrecy. Together, they endure the elements and build a life, cultivating both the soil and a growing family as the seasons turn. Yet as years pass and the world closes in, and time, hardship, and desire reshape them.
A director best known for his collaborations with actor Stellan Skarsgård, Hans Petter Moland demonstrates formidable command of his art with this powerful and richly textured adaptation of Growth of the Soil, the 1917 novel that won its author Knut Hamsun the Nobel Prize in Literature. Sharing the original’s fervently realistic style and reverence for the natural world, Moland’s latest feature opens as the captivating story of one man’s battle with a dauntingly rugged environment.
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