Lene Berg’s The Horsemen of the Apocalypse is an intriguing project. Half a century ago, the renowned Norwegian film director Arnljot Berg was arrested in Paris and charged with the murder of his third wife. Forty years later his daughter Lene Berg is visited by the ghost of her now long-deceased father. He claims that she remembers everything wrong and that it’s time to ask the right questions. But what is it that he wants her to remember? And what are the right questions?
“This unique hybrid-doc feature speaks to questions of memory and ‘truth’; to generational trauma and guilt, and to how we perceive ourselves through our relationships with those closest to us,” producer Ellen Ugelstad of Twentyone Pictures tells Business Doc Europe. “The film also assails our understanding of ‘truth’, and strives to expose the duality of our existence.”
“Lene’s voice will make use of the hybrid narrative documentary form at the same time she employs an ‘alter-ego’ to stand in for her. Lene’s famous father’s films will also play a role in this project, repurposed under Lene’s creative eye and re-edit,” Ugelstad adds.
The €800,000 (40% in place) film will have a runtime of 100 minutes. Delivery is expected December 2025. “We [Twentyone Pictures] are an independent company and a small dedicated team that will make the film rooted in the artist’s vision. We are excited to have Olav Waastad playing the father and the rest of crew in place. We are also free to work and adjust the production-structure so that the film can be shot on its own premises,” says Ugelstad.
Lene Berg has directed four feature films and a number of shorter films. As an artist she has staged numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including Manifesta (2010) and the Sydney Biennale (2008). Her film Ung Løs Gris was produced for the Norwegian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013. Her Kopfkino(2013) was nominated for an Amanda award and for Best Nordic Documentary at CPH:DOX. Berg’s most recent production was the autobiographical False Belief which premiered at Berlinale 2019, where it was nominated for a Teddy award and an Amnesty Prize.
“The perfect investor for The Horsemen of the Apocalypse is the investor who believes in art first. Lene Berg is sculpting a narrative from all aspects of the cinematic range. She is a bold, unwavering artist, who soars past boundaries and defines new territory in her films,” says Ugelstad. “This work has great potential as work of art of course, but film is meant to be consumed, especially by a ticket-buying audience.”
The producer brings “decades of experience in getting films to audiences.” Her most recent film, the award-winning The Recovery Channel (which she also directed), is currently on theatrical release across Norway as well as continuing its very successful festival circuit.
Ugelstad also works with US-based Marketing Strategist Kathleen McInnis on many Twentyone Pictures film projects, whose focus is “to craft marketing bespoke materials specifically designed to bring each film to its very best audience.”
“These…elements are vital to assuring investors their financial contributions are under professional and experienced guidance,” Ugelstad underlines. “If you want to see an undercover true crime dealing with universal themes of identity and heritage with a playful touch – invest in a Lene Berg film!”
Ugelstad further explains why she believes audiences will be attracted by this film. “First, this film has unexpected humour that we all seem to need right now — the often surreal and absurd humour that helps us manage the unmanageable in our daily lives.
“Second, memory is uniquely human — how our memory shapes our own personal narrative is a conundrum we all struggle with. Although the film tackles this very question, it is not educational as much as it is thought-provoking.
“The film will be for festivals, theatrical release and later streaming. The audiences will range vastly between the young, for whom ‘memories’ feel immediate and fresh, and the old, for whom “memories” have become abridged, recycled, untrustworthy.
“Lastly, this is a fascinating murder mystery! What was Arn Berg doing in the car with his dead third wife in the middle of the night in a Paris carpark? Where had Arn’s longing for death taken him, creatively and practically? And what did it do to a 9-year-old Lene, when she couldn’t reconcile the father she knew and the murderer he had been accused of becoming?”
