UtØye

 

 

UtØye 2018

• Director: Erik Poppe
• Seen by this director: Hawaii Oslo
• Based on novel: no
• Cast: Andrea Berntzen, Alexander Holmen, Solveig KolØen Birkeland
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in
• None of them
• Why? I remember that horrible day.
• Seen: 2 August 2024 

2011. 22 July. The horror of that day stays with us. A 32-year-old Neo-Nazi murders 77 young socialists at a summer camp on a Norwegian island.

A fictional film based on the memories of the survivors.

’We’re on an island, the safest place in the world.’ Says Kaja (Berntzen) on her mobile to her mother who is worried because of the bomb that exploded in Oslo earlier that day. But the kids at the camp are worried too. The mother of one of the campers works in the government building that was bombed.

But they’re on UtØye to have fun, promote world peace and argue politics.

Then the shooting starts.

They panic, they try to hide – there’s nowhere to hide, they run, they huddle down behind rocks, under trees. They have no idea what is happening but they hear the shooting and the screams. They see the bodies.

If the film is 90 minutes of excruciating suspense, imagine – no, it’s impossible – the terror these kids felt for the 70 minutes the shooting went on before rescue comes.

Seventy-seven were killed, hundreds seriously injured. The killer Anders Behring Breivik (not named in the film) said in court, according to the closing credits, that this was just a prelude to what would happen if the socialists didn’t change their politics, and that he would do it again.

Right wing extremism and violence is growing and spreading to this day. 

5* of 5