Paris-based sales-production Charades, a director-driven sales banner intent on bringing new voices to the world such as Gints Zilbalodis’ Oscar winner “Flow,” has boarded “Almost There,” the feature debut of Norway’s Rikke Gregersen whose first short “Dog Eat Dog” (2018) won a Student Academy Award. Her second, “The Affected” (2020) was selected for the Sundance Festival.
Ymer will release “Almost There” in Norway. The film is set to open in the rest of Scandinavia by distribution powerhouse Scanbox Entertainment.
“Almost There” (“Suser avgårde”) also represents one of the latest films from Norway’s resolutely independent production house Motlys, which produced Berlin Film Festival’s 2025 Golden Bear winner “Dreams,” and indeed all of Dag Johan Haugerud’s “Sex”/“Love”/“Dreams” trilogy. Motlys was also behind the second to fourth features of Joachim Trier, now Oscar nominated for “Sentimental Value”: “Oslo, August 31st” (2011), “Louder Than Bombs” (2015) and “Thelma” (2017).
Starring Renata Reinvse, who has just scored an Academy Award actress nomination for Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” “Dog Eat Dog,” and “The Affected” – where Reinvse has a high-profile cameo in a large ensemble cast – Gregersen’s two shorts are laced by what look like signature arch ironies.
They also ring totally true as they respectively ask discomfiting but totally questions about, repectively, selflessness in relations and activism while immersing the viewer in situations which are totally relatable.
That relatability looks set also to mark “Almost There” apart, which is already cast by Variety as one of the potential top attractions at the Works in Progress strand of this week’s Göteborg Festival’s Nordic Film Market, which runs Jan. 28-30.
Written by Rakel Kraft Biørnstad and produced by Motlys’ Ingvil Sæther Berger, “Almost There” turns on Agnes, 29, an aspiring musician, as she desperately clings to her youth while the world refuses to stand still. “The film explores the shift from carefree twenties to more serious thirties, capturing the chaos, pressure, humor and melancholy of this transition,” runs a logline.
“We immediately fell in love with the work of Rikke Gregersen when we came across ‘The Affected’ and ‘Dog Eat Dog.’ For us it was clear she was going to be a new voice to reckon with in Norway, and the fact that veteran company Motlys was developing her debut feature further convinced us we wanted to be a part of it,” Lucie Desquiens, Charades’ manager of acquisitions & sales and co-fonder Carole Baraton said in a joint statement.
“The script had everything that convinced us in her shorts – biting humor, complex emotions and deeply ambiguous characters we nonetheless wanted to spend all of our time with,” they added. “We think the film has wide appeal to both the youth – “Almost There” is a generational film – and a more mature cinephile audience, and are excited to bring it to them, hopefully starting with a launch in an A festival.”
Gregersen’s debut stars Sarah Francesca Brænne (“Sick of Myself,” “My Uncle Jens,” “Nach”), Ada Eide (“Basic Bitch,” “Utøya, July 22”), Steinar Klouman Hallert (“Sick of Myself,” “Thelma”) and Fredrik Stenberg Ditlev-Simonsen (“Wisting,” “The Architect”).
Almost There cast
Credit: Jan Tore Eriksen
“‘Almost There’ explores the complex and often contradictory transition from young adulthood to full adulthood,” Gregersen said. “The film aims to capture that unique phase where people, even in the same environment, find themselves at very different points in life, facing profound questions about identity and purpose. I want to create moments that resonate deeply, moments that make the audience think, ‘That’s exactly how it feels.’”
Gregersen told Variety when it announced the titlethat working closely with her usual cinematographer Torjus Thesen (“Solomamma”), that she would shoot with long takes, in the cinéma vérité style. Music is deeply woven into the film’s fabric, with performances and songs from both actors and musicians serving as the omniscient voice of the characters’ lives. “Almost There” is backed by the Norwegian Film Institute, Nordic Film & TV Fund and Oslo Film Fund.
“The film captures the awkward, restless space between youth and adulthood with subtle honesty and emotional clarity,” said producer Sæther Berger. “Through Rikke Gregersen’s precise balance of humor and discomfort, the film unfolds with a natural intimacy that feels lived-in. At its core is her collaboration with screenwriter Rakel Kraft Biørnstad, a creative partnership that crafts a freakishly accurate portrait of young adults still figuring out who they want to be.”
A Few Details on ‘Dog Eat Dog,’ ‘The Affected’ and ‘Requiem for Selina’
Written and directed by Gregersen, and also a BAFTA/LA Student Award winner, “Dog Eat Dog” sees Renata Reinvse play Silje, who thinks it’s not the best time to announce to her boyfriend Thomas family that she has left him when that drives him to a highly theatrical attempt to hang himself. She ends up trapped on an island and, even when she comes clean about her dumping him and his suicide attempt, perhaps still tied to Thomas whose behaviour betrays increasingly his self-obsessed and maybe pathological true self. The film stands out in its choice of camera set up, from a “Rear Window”-style opening shot to a masterful circular sweep of Silje, Thomas, his brother and his brother’s g.f. in conversation capturing a physical sense of Silje’s emotional confinement.
Written by Gregersen and Trond Arntzen (“The Night”), “The Affected” is set on a just-to-take-off airplane on which one passenger refuses to take her seat until an Afghan deportee is taken off the plane. The short doesn’t record her confrontation with a flight attendant and the plane’s captain but rather bystanders’ reactions. Some ignore the incident. Others sympathise with the protestor and the airplane bursts into applause when the deportee is finally lead off the plane. But nobody got up to join the protestor. “Everybody wants to do something but nobody does anything,” one passenger observes, capturing the film’s central irony.
Gregersen is best known of late, however, as a co-director with Ole Sebastian Kåss of series “Requiem for Selina.” Set in a snowy northern Norway in the 2000s, it chats how Selina, when bullied at school, creates in a blog a glamorous on-screen alter-ego, Celina Isabelle, who becomes one of the world’s first beauty-tip influencers, as the real-life Selina dies, acquiring the identity of Celina. Gregersen and Kåss nail the aesthetics, music – Britney Spears – and garb of the aughts. Created by Emeline Berglund and written with Benjamin Berglund, “Requiem for Selina” won the Series Mania International Panorama Students Award.
