The Nicola Valley Film Society will be showing the Norwegian film Headhunters as the third installment in its 2012-13 season.
The film follows headhunter and art thief Roger Brown on his heists, where he replaces original artwork with forged pieces. Nicola Valley Film Society past president and publicist Cathy Frizzell said it was star Aksel Hennie who piqued the society’s interest in showing the film.
“He’s considered Norway’s most famous actor,” Frizzell said. “That sounded interesting, with the combination of the crime, the thrilling kind of aspect of it, and it takes place around art so it had a lot of things that propelled us to pick it.”
Frizzell said the society chose the film based on the audience’s positive reception of Max Manus, another Norwegian film that the group showed in 2010. Hennie starred in the title role as a Second World War saboteur.
“People were really impressed with Max Manus, and they talked about how interesting it was to have something from Norway,” she said. “It sort of all came together as something that sounded interesting, and it’s a crime thriller so it’s not something we’ve tended to show in the past. This sounded like a great opportunity.”
Headhunters won the Public Choice Award at Norway’s prestigious 2012 Amanda Awards.
It’s also based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Jo Nesbo, who’s famous for his twisting plots and dark sensibilities.
“It really keeps you on the edge of your seat. It keeps you going until the very, very end which is what his books are like,” she said.
Frizzell said the film society gets a catalogue of films from the Toronto International Film Festival’s Film Circuit, and selects a combination of Canadian and foreign films throughout the year as an alternative to the blockbusters that audiences are typically exposed to.
“We are trying to show films from Canada and around the world that are thought-provoking, interesting, give you a different feel of the world than you’re usually getting from Hollywood films:” It’s sometimes more challenging to see some of these films because they explore difficult issues, but a lot of the films are like that: they give you food for thought.”
Headhunters is playing at the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology lecture theatre at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 19. Tickets are $5 at the door, and the film is rated 18A.
