Utøya 22. Juli

Excellent and disturbing description of the attacks on Norway students on the island Utoya in July 2011. The film is told out of the perspective of a fictional victim of the attack and follows the circumstances and 72 minute crisis in real time. The magic of the film is that its done as a one-shot piece . The camera hectically follows the victims. This gives you the impression to be in the middle of everything and offers the film a very authentic touch. You really feel like you are in the middle of everything and just like those students captured on the island. The film works because it portrays fear with its deepest core. The characters more and more become hopeless and so does the audience. You never know where the attacker is you never know who his next victims will be. The acting is very good, especially by the lead actress Andrea Berentzen who brilliantly portrays Kaja. The characters are fictional but they are based on the true stories of the survivors. It is creepy, it is moving and it is often hard to watch. One person in the cinema fainted. But its an important film because it brings back the memories of this terrible and sick happening. Absolutely worth to see.

It was very heavy to watch. You get a look at the reality, what really happend. And you get to follow a caracter and see the panic that happend when all the shooting startet.

I was afraid to watch the movie, due to all the horrible kills, but the producer really did manage to make an amazing point here, that no ideology is worth any life.

How do I even begin to explain my feelings about this movie. It´s a really really good movie. Just the way it is shot and made, the actors, the feeling you get as a audience, is just breathtaking. As a person that hasn´t lost anyone in the shooting that day, this movie made me care about the lead role, Kaja (Andrea Berntzen). I felt desperate, and helpless since I couldn´t intervene and help out. Not to say for certain, but that is probably what many felt when they were running for their lives.

Eirik Poppe made this movie all about "Kaja" and her mission on finding her sister. It is based on true stories that has been told by the youth that were there, which gives the movie a more believable plot that strikes where it hurts. The movie is a one-take film that lasts as long as the attack did in real life, and that gives a you another perspective on how long it took for the help to come.

I just wanted the movie to end after a little while to be honest, because the movie just really struck me and it got too real at times. This is not a movie I would recommend to everyone. If you want to watch it, just remember that this all happened for real. You might not be as tough as you think, I know I was certainly wrong about that. If you were there or have experienced something like that before, I would not recommend you seeing it, but of course you should decide that for yourself. Don´t get me wrong, this is a really good reminder of what happened 7 years ago and how it all went down, and I totally understand why this movie was made, but there is no way for me to say that this movie didn´t make me feel bad. It made me feel like shit, and nauseous all at once.

U - July 22 is an extremely difficult film to judge. Based on the horrific events that occurred on Utøya island in Norway, were one man shot and murdered 69 people, most of them youngsters (in addition to being responsible for a bomb attack in Oslo earlier that day). Norway is quite a safe place to live, so that something as gruesome as that happened here is confusing, shocking and something that I'll never truly be able to understand. It's therefore a difficult film to judge because the events are still close to heart. It's, as I'm writing this, been close to seven years since the attacks, which kinda feels like no time has passed at all. So from the moment the film start, you've already brought in your feeling of sadness to the film.

But I do think this is a good film. I think its made with dignity and respect, and I think its importance come across very well. It's a film that we need in order for us to, if not fully, at least be able to understand a little bit about how it was like for the people who were trapped on Utøya during the shooting. How brutal, unforgiving, isolated and meaningless it all was. The film doesn't shy away from the brutality of it, and I'm glad that it didn't. It had to be brutal in order to convey the feeling of how it was like. It had to be violent in order for us to understand it. The film does a good job of translating the feeling to the viewers.

Shot entirely in one-take on the island itself with unknown actors and lasting exactly as long as the shooting actually did, the film feels as real as it possibly could have. There's not much focus on the perpetrator, yet his presence is felt throughout the entirety of the film. The loud and uncomfortable sound of shots being fired is constant and the shrieking of scared teens is uncomfortably present. The panic, confusion and anxiety is all over the place. There are no moments to rest, and the film is exhaustingly intense and difficult to watch. Once the film ended the cinema was filled with silence. No one made any noise and it was quite simply put a powerful experience.

There are certain moments in it that feels slightly artificial, though it's hard for me to know that for sure, as I wasn't there during the attack. Yet, some parts didn't fully convince me. This might be because some of the acting isn't the strongest. Which is a bit of the risque you run when shooting a film in one-take. Andrea Berntzen is however a star. Her performance is outstanding. The camera follows her throughout the entire film, and she perfectly manages to capture and convey every emotion you would imagine someone going through in a situation like that.

This is not a film for everyone, but for me, as a Norwegian, it's essential viewing due to how close it is. In a world where violence happens every day and we've somehow gotten used to reading about, a film like this is important. If only to make us understand a little bit more. If only to make us feel a lot more.

( Review also posted on Listal and letterboxd)