Erik Poppe’s film Utøya – July 22, which premiered at the International Biennale in Berlin earlier this year, opens with a shot of the main character, 18-year-old Kaja, played by the young Norwegian actress Andrea Berntzen, standing in a wood. She stares intensely into the camera and asserts: “You will never understand. This happened to me.” Kaja then leads us to a clearing full of tents and teenagers. Poppe’s film takes us back to the worst terrorist attack in modern Norwegian history, perpetrated in 2011 by the white Norwegian right-wing extremist and white supremacist Anders Behring Breivik. Except for a few split seconds in which we get a glimpse of a man in a black uniform standing on a cliff with a gun, Utøya – July 22 never shows Breivik. Instead, what we see over the course of 72 devastating minutes are defenseless teenagers fleeing and failing to escape...
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
