Buddy

Kristoffer, twenty-four, lives in the Tøyen district of Oslo, makes a living hanging billboards with his friends, and films his own life in his spare time. When the tapes reach a television programme, his life becomes a spectacle overnight. The film is not interested in the taste of fame. It is interested in what a camera does to a friendship. In telling his own story Kristoffer is also broadcasting other people's, and the question of consent detonates halfway through. The form is split in two by the home-video material inside it: on one side a properly shot film, on the other the raw footage the hero shot himself. The distance between them is exactly the distance between honesty and editing. Morten Tyldum directed, from a script by Lars Gudmestad. Tyldum reached an international audience later with Headhunters and The Imitation Game; the work here is still small-scale, confined to Oslo, and a great deal warmer. The film won two Amanda Awards in 2004, for Best Film and Best Actor. Nicolai Cleve Broch, Aksel Hennie, Anders Baasmo Christiansen and Pia Tjelta star. Who it is for: viewers who like Scandinavian friendship comedies and early critiques of the reality-television age. Who it is not for: anyone expecting dark Norwegian cinema. This film is optimistic, sweet, and in the end it hurts nobody.