The moment that young Norwegian filmmaker Petter Aaberg stood on a bridge and thought about hurling himself over marks the starting point of Young & Afraid, the remarkable and harrowing new feature documentary which Aaberg directed with his film school colleague and friend, Sverre Kvamme.
In the film, Petter looks at his own life, often in very intimate and painful detail. He and his co-director also venture out into night-time Oslo in search of other lost young souls: musicians off their heads on drugs or young women and transsexuals who are self-harming or popping pills or drowning their sorrows in too much alcohol.
The film, screening this week at the Nordisk Panorama, was produced through Oslo-based Indie Film.
Carsten Aanonsen. Producer and Managing Director of the company, first encountered the two directors at the Grimstad Short Film Festival in 2018. Sverre had approached him there after a producer’s presentation session and asked if he could show him the project.
By then, the filmmakers had already put together a 20-minute clip. “I thought initially this was almost impossible to make a film of,” he says of the early footage which showed a character using drugs in an extreme and self-destructive way.
Nonetheless, Aanonsen saw potential. “I was intrigued at the same time and kind of keen,” he recalls. “I thought there is something here which could fit Indie Films.”
The company had previously made other documentaries looking at youth culture and the problems of drug abuse, self-harming and suicide. For example, the 2014 documentary Ida’s Diary, directed by August Baugstø Hanssen, followed a young Norwegian woman suffering from borderline personality disorder. This was aimed at a similar target audience.
The Indie Films boss therefore invited the two young directors (both in their early 20s) to pitch the project at a lunch at the office. It was well received by his colleagues.
It helped that the directors were so well-prepared. They already knew many of the characters they wanted to include in the documentary and had a clear vision of how the film might unfold. They had also secured written agreement from their subjects about being filmed. (This allowed the subjects to pull out from the project at any moment and gave them the chance to see and approve a final cut).
“We said yes right away – that we would take this into development and see what we would make of it.” Even though this is their first professional film, the two directors are very ambitious, meticulous and hardworking, and you can see that in the final product.
This was all happening just before Petter, who was bisexual, had met Miriam, soon to become his girlfriend. Their courtship, relationship and even their sex life were all to be filmed and included as part of the documentary.
At the Q&A for the film in Malmö earlier this week, Petter was asked by an audience member if he felt this relationship with Miriam had been affected by the presence of the cameras. The co-director said it was impossible to tell but admitted that there had been a “certain strain” put on the couple because of the filming.
For Petter himself, making the documentary was clearly therapeutic. “He found it to have a positive effect on his situation,” Aanonsen says.
The producer is in his mid 50s and acknowledges there were moments in the film in which his perspective clashed with that of the young directors. For example, there is a very explicit sex scene between Petter and Miriam (which ends with a surprise element).
“Petter and Miriam felt this was a key scene…that was a scene where I was very reluctant and both directors and Miriam were the opposite,” Aanonsen remembers. “They were pretty keen on having it in and showing that they could have a sex life that was open and good for them both. My fear was that if you showed the film in a classroom, it would be the scene that would create laughter and possibly ruin the full experience in a collective situation. But I am not so sure I was right about that.”
The scene stayed in.
This wasn’t a straightforward film to make. Backers were sometimes sceptical. There were continual ethical and logistical dilemmas to negotiate. Aanonsen pays tribute to creative producer Even G. Benestad for dealing with the day to day problems.
The project was pitched at Visions Du Reel, Meet Market in Sheffield and at the Nordic Panorama. Copenhagen-based outfit Good Company Pictures soon came aboard as a co-producer.
Last month the film won the Audience Award at the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund – a clear sign that it is resonating with young Scandinavian viewers.
Indie Film is handling the Norwegian theatrical release of Young & Afraid. UK and Barcelona-based Sideways Film has taken on world sales rights on the film.
What will the directors be up to next? Aanonsen is keen to work with them both again but is not yet sure what they are planning.
“I hope to be working with them on new projects. I think this one has been so straining on them that they haven’t really had the opportunity to develop new material…I think they feel the need to develop something separate from each other,” the producer says of the young filmmakers who expose so much of themselves and their own lives in Young & Afraid.
