Utøya: July 22

On 22 July 2011 an armed attack was carried out on the youth camp on the island of Utøya and sixty-nine people were killed. The film covers the seventy-two minutes from the beginning of the attack to its end, following a fictional girl. The attacker is not shown; he exists only as a distant silhouette and a sound. The subject is not the perpetrator but what the people fleeing did during that time. They hide, phone their families, lose each other, wait for help. All of the film's force comes from not knowing: nobody understands what is happening and neither does the viewer. The form rests on a single decision: it was shot in one unbroken take and runs the real length of the attack. The camera never cuts, so the viewer cannot get out either. The production was argued over. Whether such an event should be dramatised was discussed at length in Norway; the makers worked with survivors and families and based the central character on no real person. Another film about the same day appeared the same year, telling it alongside the trial. Andrea Berntzen leads. Erik Poppe directs. Who it is for: viewers who can watch films that take formal risks. Who it is not for: anyone who will struggle with the subject or the method; the warning is real and the film softens nothing.