Cinema in Norway has a long history, dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, and has an important stance in European cinema, contributing at least 30 feature-length films a year. There have been over 1,050 films made in Norway ever since cinema's first introduction to the country in 1907. Some of these films have been selected for the most prestigious film festivals around the world such as Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, and Venice Film Festival. Fourteen Norwegian films have garnered Academy Award nominations. Two of them won the award: Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki for Best Documentary Feature Film in 1951 and Torill Kove's The Danish Poet for Best Animated Short Film in 2006. The first domestically produced Norwegian film was a short about fishermen, Fiskerlivets farer ("The Dangers in a Fisherman's Life"), dating from 1907. The first feature was released in 1911, produced by Halfman Nobel Roede. In 1931 Tancred Ibsen, grandson of playwright Henrik Ibsen, presented Norway's first feature-length sound film, Den store barnedåpen ("The Great Christening"). Throughout the 1930s, Ibsen dominated the nation's film industry. Fellow film director Leif Sinding was also very successful during this period. Ibsen produced conventional melodramas more or less on the model of Hollywood films. In the modern era, notable filmmakers of Norway include, Joachim Trier, 3 time Cannes Film Festival contender, and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, also the creator of the internationally acclaimed Norwegian film trilogy: the Oslo trilogy, which consists of the films Oslo August 31st, Reprise and The Worst Person in the World. Followed by Morten Tyldum, an Academy Award for Best Director nominee, best known for making the Norwegian thriller film Headhunters (2011), The 2014 historical drama The Imitation Game, and the science fiction drama Passengers (2016). Other notable directors include but are not limited to: Eskil Vogt, Bent Hamer, Nils Gaup and Espen Sandberg.

Notable films

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Notable short films

Actors

Directors

Other notable persons in the Norwegian film industry

Awards

The Norwegian equivalent of the Academy Awards is the Amanda award, which is presented during the annual Norwegian Film Festival in Haugesund. The prize was created in 1985. The Amanda award is presented in following categories: Best Norwegian Film, Best Directing, Best Male Actor, Best Female Actress, Best Film for Children and Youth, Best Screenplay, Best Short Film, Best Documentary (however, a documentary can also win the Best Film award), Best Foreign Film and an honorary award. The documentary Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl received the Academy Award for Documentary Feature at the 24th Academy Awards in 1951. It is the only feature film in Norwegian history to win an Academy Award. In 2006 the Norwegian/Canadian animated short film The Danish Poet, directed by Norwegian Torill Kove and narrated by Norwegian screen legend Liv Ullmann, won an Academy Award for Animated Short Film, and became the second Norwegian production to receive an Academy Award. As of 2013, five films from Norway have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film: Nine Lives (1957), The Pathfinder (1987), The Other Side of Sunday (1996), Elling (2001) and Kon-Tiki (2012).

Film festivals

Film commissions

Film schools

Film schools include: Other alternatives for more theoretical higher education in film include: There are also several more practical private film collages: