Trine Wiggen Movies

A young man finds that the current political turmoil in Eastern Europe bears uncanny comparisons to his own rocky homosexual awakening in The Man Who Loved Yngve, Stiane Kristiansen's emotionally-charged tale of coming out in late 1980s Europe. For 17-year-old Jarle Klepp, it seems life could not possibly improve; as a resident of the small town of Stavanger, Norway, Jarle sits on the very cusp of adulthood. He also claims a gorgeous girlfriend and a hip best friend, and looks ahead eagerly to his plans to kick start a punk band called 'Mattias Rust.' In truth, however, Jarle harbors long-buried gay desires, and it takes another young man - a village newcomer called Yngve - to draw out these latent feelings. Suddenly, Jarle finds himself plunged headfirst into a maelstrom of conflicting feelings, desires, and impulses, led forward only by an overwhelming urge to be as close to Yngve as possible, all the time. In the end, Jarle's need to be true to himself may claim its own rewards, but it will also inevitably mean losing the security of approval from many around him. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

With her uncommonly gentle, understated slice-of-life drama Kissed by Winter (AKA Vinterkyss), director and co-writer Sara Johnsen observes the intersection of several troubled lives in a Norwegian small town. As physician Anika Hallin recovers from the culture shock of a transplant from the big city of Oslo to this new rural community, she must also grapple with the memories of the calamity that her estranged husband forced her to endure; meanwhile, snow-plow driver Kaj (Kristoffer Joner) contends with his wife's abandonment of him - after he just recently finished construction of an expensive house entirely for her sake. In a third substory, two married Iranian immigrants (Mina Azarian and Michalis Koutsogiannakis) learn that their missing son, Darjosh (Jade Francis Haj) has turned up dead on the side of the road with strange punctures on the bottoms of his feet. As the mystery of this death lingers, each character suffers through his or her own deeply personal, emotional crisis and grapples with the need to take responsibility for the young man's tragic end. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide