It's about film!

He said that, though not as a comment on my journalistic plans, so far I never got there, but about the series of portrait interviews that have accompanied the festival director for the past thirteen years. Once he even posed with fangs.

- There was too much personal focus for a period, says Lørdahl, and throws some stated sarcasm about cultural journalists who do not want to talk about what this is after all – namely film.

Okay, but the temptation is great when faced with a man who spends a disproportionate amount of his life in dark cinemas around the world, who for a number of years have written and commented on films in Norwegian media and who have simultaneously emerged as the personification of a film festival that brings cinematic highlights from around the world to the capital's cinema audience.

The man who still has a credible reputation for being observed in light trousers one summer day in the late nineties sticks up under two meters and is always easily recognizable in a black leather jacket and black jeans under a – albeit receding and short-cut – dark fringe. It is still possible to distinguish it from a complexion that testifies to the interest he spends all his time on. A stone's throw away from the festival office in Filmens hus, at Postkaféen where the sun never shines either, we meet to talk about film. Just that.

No profile

Lørdahl watches a lot of film, and he has no problems with all the films that are on this year's program. On the contrary, he recommends them all and preferably a few who unfortunately did not join the program. When I ask if the festival has a profile or trend, however, the tabloid alarm rings again at Lørdahl.

- I have never fully understood such questions about profile and theme. It is exclusively a media-created thing, or something you can use to cover the media. This is never something we think about when we program the festival. People do not make films to fit into our theme. It would be absurd if all the good films were about one theme, he says.

Because if Lørdahl is to be pressured to give a characteristic that is unifying for the films during this year's festival, it must be that they are good. Therefore, there are also some very heavy sighs from the other end of the table when I ask Lørdahl to give Ny Tid readers some well-founded priorities among the films that do not necessarily come in regular cinema distribution, the films that you may only have the opportunity to see now. Lørdahl obviously has great anguish when he is forced to skip some favorites that the Norwegian film agencies also picked up.

- Dreamers, American Splendor, Elephant, he mutters as he foams down the program.

- This will be a good winter here. In fact, we have never had so many films at the festival that the agencies have also picked up. There is less difference between the agency films and the rest of the program than there has been before, says Lørdahl to extract the time while he searches with his finger through the program. After going a couple of small laps with himself, Lørdahl is still ready.

Japan

- We have to go to Japan. In all, we have eight Japanese titles, and none of them are well imported yet. I especially love Bright future by Kiyosh Kurosawa. He is clearly one of Japan's most exciting directors, and has also earned a name in the international context. He prefers to associate people with horror films, for example Press, as we showed last year. Bright future is, however, a completely different type of film, a very strange film that is primarily realistic, but also has amazing elements.

Lørdahl talks about a sometimes anarchic film where two young men who work and live together come to the edge with their employer, parents and the whole generation. More, however, I am not allowed to tell so as not to reveal too much.

- The thing is that there are currently many Japanese filmmakers who make stories that try to understand Japanese society. A society that is about to break up the traditional structure and which is creating a great deal of confusion among young people in Japan. Bright future adds its crazy and strange history to this segment, says Lørdahl, and continues.

- Then of course you have to go and watch the documentary Ambivalent future which is about the recording of Bright future and that gives a very close view of Kurosawa.

Lørdahl is hard to stop now. Before I know it, I'm an audience member of Lørdahl's analyzes of Japanese society and the parallels to Norwegian isolation and exceptionalism. Not surprisingly, we are therefore still in Japan when I get the festival manager maneuvered into a new recommendation.

- Must have at least one more Japanese, yes. vibrator is perhaps the most exciting of all the Japanese Independent films this year. This is a filmization of a Japanese modern female writer and is also a rather strange film, a road movie where most of it takes place in the head of a female hawker. A movie that has many unexpected turning points and is characterized by a strongly subjective style in which we experience everything with her as a filter. The lead actor actually received the award for Best Actor in Tokyo last week.

Independent American

When Lørdahl is to make a final recommendation on the feature film, he still fails to let Gus Van Sants Elephant lie. The film that received both the gold palm for best film and for best direction during this year's Cannes festival has been criticized for not wanting to provide clear answers and solutions, but Lørdahl thinks that this is the film's strength.

- It shows what is happening in a realistic way and does not try to answer why. The fact that one does not want to give any obvious answers is perhaps a trend among some filmmakers at the moment, a trend that we also see on the documentary side. Audiences and critics are often very frustrated when they do not get answers to the questions the film asks, but I think this film became much stronger than it might have been if you chose a different and simplified solution.

Gus Van Sant dishes in Elephant the spotlight on the US high school massacres, and when the film pulled in the two coveted awards in Cannes, American teams believed the award was governed by a French desire to premiere US-critical films.

Documentary in focus

One feature that has always been evident at the Oslo International Film Festival is the willingness to make room for the good documentary. This year, the audience can choose from fourteen films with a great thematic spread.

- People have different angles and should be able to find something that fits. For example, if you have read or just heard of Bukowski, you will enjoy it immensely Bukowski: Born in to this. If you have heard any of Jimmy Scott's recordings, you will be advised Jimmy Scott: If you only knew. That is, I had not heard any of them until I saw the movie, but bought four pieces afterwards, and probably buys even more. See?

Lørdahl is getting back up to speed now and of course very much want to recommend everything, again. With a little power and persuasion, he still manages to put a few precise fingers into the program.

- The Brazilian bus 174 is a must. Some have probably come along City of God, and this is at least as strong a movie, even though it's a documentary. This is a unique story that cannot be recreated. It is over two hours long and there is not one dead point. You will sit with your nerves in high tension all the way and if you leave the movie without having felt a tear you will hardly have the ability to cry in the first place. It grips violently.

Bus 174 is the story of a young man from the street in Rio de Janeiro as the morning of 12. June 2000 board the 174 bus before hijacking it and taking all the passengers hostage. The bus stands still and the police surround the bus. All media is present and everything is documented.

- The special thing is that the director has provided some completely unique material about the hijacker. About his background and family. He has interviewed the hostages who comment second by second. The police acting the gossip. It gives an incredibly deep picture of the social situation and not least the role of the media in development. You've never seen anything like it. It is simply brilliant.

There is an unusually long pause in Lørdahl's speech flood and the film director looks almost devilishly in his own film program.

Dogumentary

- Those who are a little interested in film, or wonder what von Trier is doing, must of course get involved The five obstructions which is the first “dogumentary”. For the uninitiated, this term is the name of the new Danish dogma experiment which this time lays down guidelines for how the documentary should be made.

I The five obstructions these guides are the very theme where we follow Lars von Trier as he ravages with his old idol Jørgen Leth. Trier challenges Leth to create five new versions of the short film The perfect human from 1967, but each time with new bans and restrictions.

- He is really naughty and makes it quite troublesome for Leth, but it also means that the whole process around making a film is heavily illuminated, and it is of course exciting. This film appears to be one of the best von Trier has done, and when it opened the documentary film festival in Copenhagen last week, it was an immediate success and garnered huge reviews.

Stevie

After a tour of Brazil and Denmark, Lørdahl takes us back to the US for a final recommendation.

- Stevie is a film that is guaranteed to make you think a little extra and in a way you probably did not think was possible. Director Steve James is the man behind the film Hoop Dreams, which is perhaps one of the best documentaries ever made in the United States.

I Stevie it is a hyperactive boy that the director was previously in contact with, and now we meet him as a young bitter and not completely law-abiding redneck after many years in various children's and foster homes.

- The special thing here is that the film forces you to think completely differently about a person that you would normally condemn without blinking. And this is something that is repeated in several documentaries at the moment. It challenges the very simplistic condemnation one often sees in the media and a lot of film otherwise. It is very exciting to see how in several good films one manages to problematize such basic concepts as guilt and innocence. Once again, Lørdahl has found an excuse to talk about all the films at once and there are titles and recommendations on the assembly line. In the end, Lørdahl of course concludes that the Norwegian festival audience is blasé and spoiled.

- So much good film and you can still get tickets without having to stand in line! It's not like that in Tokyo, or Berlin, or Cannes, or Venecia, or Toronto, at Sundance or what?

Tommy Lørdahl has been there at least, but now he has to return to a somewhat cramped office in Dronnigensgate where there is still room for a couple of hours before the next working day begins.

- I do not even dare to have a beer, he says resignedly.

- I sleep and eat so little now that it would go completely out of control.

No, of course. The prince of darkness never sleeps.