Utøya 22. July (2018)

Directed by: Erik Poppe | 93 minutes | drama, thriller | Actors: Andrea Berntzen, Aleksander Holmen, Brede Fristad, Elli Rhiannon Müller Osbourne, Sorosh Sadat, Ada Eide, Ingeborg Enes, Jenny Svennevig, Hang Tran

We can still imagine heaven on earth. But hell? Do we really understand how the Jews of Auschwitz felt on the way to the gas chamber? What was it like on September 11, 2001 aboard Flight United 93? Can we even imagine the traumas that occupy part of the world’s population day and night?

Enter ‘Utøya 22.July’. In this intense drama by Erik Poppe, we go back to 22 July 2011, the day Norway was rocked by two acts of terror. First, a bomb exploded near Prime Minister Stoltenberg’s office. The right-wing extremist perpetrator then traveled to the island of Utøya, where the youth section of the Workers’ Party held its summer camp. The perpetrator had dressed up as a police officer, with the intention of luring the children as a perverted Pied Piper from Hamelin. Then the shooting started. It took 72 minutes. 69 children died.

In ‘Utøya 22. Juli’ we experience these infernal 72 minutes through the eyes of the fictional character Kaja. Shortly before the shooting she argued with her younger sister Emilie, after which Kaja goes her own way. Despite all the fear of the shooter, she now goes in search of Emilie and we experience up close what it must have been like on the island. With Kaja as our guide, we see the youngsters running, the dying, the children who have crawled away in fear, the swimmers, the panic, the chaos.

The honest and cinematically high-quality ‘Utøya 22. Juli’ comes to us in a documentary style as we also know it from ‘United 93’ or ‘Son of Saul’. Troubled handheld images, no music, no dramatic interventions, no clear images of the perpetrator. It is inevitable that the story itself is a composition. By following the fictional Kaja (great role by Andrea Berntzen) we get a fairly complete picture of what happened then.

Although it is impossible to really feel what the victims felt from the cinema seat, watching ‘Utøya 22. July’ is certainly no fun. Especially in the beginning we are shocked to burst with every shot and we calm down again when the shooting stops for a while. Our knowledge of the event gives us an edge over the victims, because we know there is only one shooter, while the kids think there are multiple shooters all the time.

The question remains why a film like ‘Utøya 22. Juli’ had to be made so soon after the attack. Maybe to stay alert. Perhaps to gain more empathy for the many traumatized people in the world. Perhaps to put our daily worries into perspective. But perhaps also because we still know the name of the perpetrator while the names of the children are slowly fading again. Of course we never get to know them completely in ‘Utøya 22. July’. Yet for 72 minutes we are with those poor boys and girls who had to face death at a far too young age. Who are we then to look away?