Meet the 2022 selection committees

Of this year’s 2233 submitted films, the selection committees have made their final picks for The 45th Norwegian Short Film Festival.

On Thursday 7th April, all films in the 2022 competition programs will be made public.After a two-year hiatus and digital editions, the festival is gearing up for a return to sunny Grimstad and an in-person event.

Below we present this year’s committee members, who have spent months watching each submitted film and made their final selections for the competition programs Norwegian Shorts, International Shorts, Short Documentaries, and Norwegian Music Videos.

HAPPY WITH THE SELECTION

Festival Director Anita Svingen is impressed with the result and proud of all the committee members who have seen all the films and made their selection in the process.
- Days have been numerous, long and hectic, and many tough choices have had to be made, but we are all very excited to share this year’s competition programs with the filmmakers, the industry and the audiences, Svingen says.

All competition programs will be announced in full at kortfilmfestivalen.no, Facebook, and Instagram - stay tuned!

NORWEGIAN SHORT FILM

Unni Straume er regnet som en av de betydeligste moderne filmskaperne i Norge. Hun er professor i filmregi, og har vært leder for regilinja ved Den norske Filmskolen. Straume fikk sitt gjennombrudd i 1990 med sin første spillefilm, Til en ukjent, og filmene hennes har blitt vist på festivaler som Cannes, Sundance, Venezia, San Sebastian og Toronto. Hennes spillefilm, Thranes metode (1998) ble innkjøpt av Museum of Modern Art i New York (MoMA). Hun har mottatt flere priser i inn- og utland, blant annet Den norske filmkritikerprisen for Drømspel (1994), og filmbransjens egen pris, Gullklapperen. Kortfilmfestivalen kuraterte i 2018 et retrospektiv av hennes kort- og dokumentarfilmer.

Tove Undheim is educated from the Oslo National Academy of The Arts (KHIO) and The Norwegian Film School. She has written and directed several critically acclaimed short films and documentaries, including last year’s Quarantined Family Karlsen, which also screened at the Short Film Festival. In 2020 she made her feature film debut with Twigson & The Sea Monster..

Shahrukh Kavousi is a director born in Iran and based in Oslo. He is a graduate of Bergen Academy of Art and Design, and Nordland School of Arts and Film. His debut film, the documentary The Twin Hairdressers from Baghdad (2004), received honorable mention at The Norwegian Short Film Festival and The Norwegian Documentary Film Festival. Since then he has directed several shorts and novella films, and produced films for others, like Camilla Figenschou’s feature film, Tauba (2020). Kavousi runs his own company, Close Up Film AS, and is currently developing his first feature film.

SHORT DOCUMENTARY

Racha Larsen er kreativ filmprodusent og regissør. Hun har jobbet for Nordisk Film, Rubicon og Strix, som både regissør, redaktør og linjeprodusent. I 2018 startet hun selskapet Yellow Log som fokuserer på kreativ dokumentarfilm. Hennes første langfilm som produsent, Where Man Returns, received the Amanda Award for best documentary in 2019.
Racha has master degrees in Ethnographic Documentary from University of Manchester, Documentary filmmaking from Volda University College, and in Management from BI Norwegian Business School. In 2021 she co-founded and co-headed the documentary festival MIRAGE - Art of the Real Festival.

Halvor Nitteberg is a producer and director with degrees in Television and Documentary Directing from the Norwegian Film School and NTNU Trondheim. He is currently working as project manager for NRK, primarily focusing on documentary series.
He has worked with tv-series, documentaries, music videos, and more since 1999, and his production company, Nitteberg Film & TV, has made two documentaries which were included in IDFA’s competition program.

Sverre Kvamme grew up in a small village in western Norway. He studied at The European Film College and Nordland College of Art and Film, and has a BA from Tromsø Academy of Contemporary Art. With his personal approach to filmmaking, his works have moved between big topics like gender, childhood, sorrow, and death. In 2021, he released his debut feature documentary, Young & Afraid.

MUSIC VIDEO

Juno Jensen is an interdiciplinary artist working in the crossfields between music, sound, film, performance, photography, text, and design. As composer, vocalist, and producer, she is known for her dark and cinematic combination of acoustic and electronic sounds, and she releases music as Pieces of Juno. Jensen was born and raised in Fredrikstad, Norway, but lives and works in Oslo.

Kristin Winsents is the Head of music programming at NRK P13. Winsents has worked with music on radio and TV within NRK for over 20 years, including the TV program Lydverket, and as a presenter, reporter and producer in P1, P2, P3 and now P13. She has also worked as a music critic, been a member of the organizing and touring committee of the Arts Council Norway and sat on various juries in the Spellemann Awards.

INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM

Armita Keyani is a Norwegian filmmaker from Rælingen municipality
with bachelor degrees in both Film and Television, and Contemporary Art studies. Her films are mostly drama comedies dealing with human nature’s absurdities, often set in unusual situations to explore the larger themes. Her 2018 graduation film, Welcome Home, screened in competition at Tribeca Film Festival, and won Vimeo’s 2019 Comedy of the Year award. Her latest film, Customs (2021) has screened at several Academy Award qualifying festivals, such as The Norwegian Short Film Festival and Palm Springs International ShortFest, and is still touring the festival circuit.

Elisa Fernanda Pirir was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala. She moved to Northern Norway in 2007 where she started participating in film productions. After graduating film school in 2016, she joined Mer Film as a producer alongside Maria Ekerhovd, and is currently head of the company’s office in Tromsø. She is also Mer Film’s head of television and in charge of all non- European co-productions, as well as the Mer Film Talent development program.
Her work has been screened and won awards at many international film festivals, such as Busan Int. Film Festival, Gothenburg Int. Film Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival and her film LIREMU BARAN (dir. Caj Cojoc) won the 2020 Golden Chair for Best Norwegian Short Film at The Norwegian Short Film Festival. In 2021 she had two shorts qualifying as Oscar contenders.

Neil Young is a freelance film critic and programmer from Sunderland, UK, based in Vienna. His current outlets include Modern Times Review, Sight & Sound, and Screen International. He works as a programmer/consultant for, among others, the European Film Festival of Palić (Serbia), Vienna Shorts and the Viennale. He is also a filmmaker of several short films, and his feature-length experimental documentary Rihaction premiered at the 2019 Diagonale in Graz, Austria.

Draga Vidovic has worked with film festivals in Norway for more than a decade. She is currently print and film coordinator at the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund; programming, film and print coordinator at Tromsø International Film Festival, where she is also on the programming team for TIFF Junior. She has been with the Norwegian Short Film Festival team for almost ten years, primarily as film and print coordinator.

Julie Pichard has a degree in film editing and has worked extensively as an editor in France and Norway. She has also studied cultural project management and worked as a coordinator for Institut Français at the French Embassy to Norway. Julie started as guest coordinator for the festival in 2019 and now works as the festival's producer.

Anika Salvesen is a Polish filmmaker based in Norway. Anika works with both fiction and documentary, with experimental approaches to cinema aesthetics and non-traditional narrative styles. In 2021 she co-founded film collective and production company Morild Film. From 2022 she works as assistant director and producer at the Norwegian Short Film Festival.

Bård Ydën has been editor and programmer for the festival since 2018, but has worked with film festivals since 2003, when he joined Skeive Filmer, now Oslo/Fusion International Film Festival, where he’s been Executive and Programming Director from 2007 to 2016, and from 2018 onwards. He has extensive jury experience, and has consulted and curated for many international film festivals. In 2017, he co-founded The Faroe Islands’ Int. Minority Film Festival, and since 2018 he has been part of the organizing team for the EFM Horizons Start-Up program at Berlinale.

Anita Svingen joined The Norwegian Short Film Festival, one of Norway’s longest running film festivals, in 2006, and took over as Executive Director in 2012. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Film and Television studies from University of Westminster in London, and is former Head of Programming for SBS Radio. She has also worked in TV production for companies such as Rubicon and Dinamo.