Beginning August 7, Scandinavia House will host a virtual cinema presentation of Out Stealing Horses, based on the award-winning novel by Per Petterson, Norway’s contender for the Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards.
In November of 1999, following the death of his wife, 67-year-old Trond Sander (Stellan Skarsgård) has retired from Oslo to a small village in the east of Norway, where he plans to wait out the end of the millennium in solitude. But his reverie is interrupted one winter night by a chance run-in with an acquaintance, which evokes memories from a long-ago, fateful summer in 1948 — spent in a simple wooden hut by the river with his much-admired father. Images of long afternoons in the forest with his close friend Jon, rides on wild horses, and hard work felling wood blur into a memory of carefree happiness, but one fraught with the danger of impending events not quite in Trond’s control. For the summer of stealing horses and youthful adventures was also the summer of Trond’s first love; and one in which Trond’s father prepared him to carry the burden of a forthcoming betrayal.
Filmed in the midst of a breathtaking landscape of mountains and rivers between Norway and Sweden, Out Stealing Horses unfolds a tale of love and loss, disappointment and guilt, where oscillations between collaboration and resistance become an indelible part of childhood memory. Directed by Hans Petter Moland (Norway, 2019)
The film release will be coordinated with a special video introduction by actor Liam Neeson and a Q&A with director Hans Petter Moland and moderator Tomris Laffly. Please check back to this page closer to the date for virtual ticket instructions and information on the special video event.
Special thanks to Royal Norwegian Consulate General in New York and Magnolia Pictures.
“Sweeping and elegiac”—Variety
“A highly accomplished meditation on life, guilt and responsibility”—The Hollywood Reporter
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Hans Petter Moland (b.1955, Norway) graduated from Emerson College. His film Aberdeen (2000) premiered in competition at Karlovy Vary, where Ian Hart won the Best Actor Award, and later won awards at festivals in the U.S., Milan and at the European Film Festival. In 2004 his film The Beautiful Country starring Nick Nolte, Tim Roth and Bai Ling competed in Berlin. His film A Somewhat Gentle Man won the Berliner Morgenpost Readers’ Award at the Berlinale in 2010 and numerous prizes, including the Special Jury Prize at Chicago International Film Festival. In Order of Disappearance (2014) was Hans Petter Moland’s third competition entry in the Berlinale.
For his adaptation of the famous Norwegian book Comrade Pedersen (2006), Moland won the award for Best Direction at the Montreal World Film Festival, and his short film United We Stand won the Grand Prix in Clairmont Ferrand and an additional 23 awards worldwide. He has enjoyed a long collaboration with Stellan Skarsgård, who plays the main role in Out Stealing Horses and also starred in the Competition entries En ganske snill mann and Kraftidioten (2013).
Filmography
1993 Secondløitnanten 1995 Kjærlighetens kjøtere 2000 Aberdeen 2002 Folk Flest Bor i Kina 2004 The Beautiful Country 2006 Gymnaslærer Pedersen 2010 En ganske snill mann (A Somewhat Gentle Man) 2012 When Bubbles Burst 2013 Kraftidioten (In Order of Disappearance) 2019 Ut og stjæle hester (Out Stealing Horses)