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Itonje Søimer Guttormsen's Gritt is showing exclusively on Mubi in many countries starting December 22, 2021 in the series Debuts.The making of Gritt, or how to put stones in your shoes to prevent you from getting where you think you should be going, and instead bump into all that other stuff you can put into the pot, to brew some new reality.In 2009 I ran into Birgitte Larsen (a.k.a. Gritt) sitting on a blanket in a park in Oslo. She had acted in a film school exercise I did two years earlier, but although I was struck by her intense and unusual presence even then, we hadn’t stayed in touch. Nevertheless, we immediately felt that this was a crucial encounter. I was in a crisis with the film medium in terms of format and production method and was aching to experiment. Also, I had recently encountered the...

The most fascinating element of Itonje Søimer Guttormsen’s strong feature debut “Gritt” is the way the director presents a problematic character who polarizes viewers. For some, Gritt (Birgitte Larsen) will be seen as a passionately creative woman whose inability to break into the alternative performance community leads her to make some very bad choices — when her free-thinking approach is stifled, she’s denied an outlet and does some foolish things. Others however will have a different take: Gritt is a troubled woman who appropriates half-ideas she’s unable to fully process, and it’s her self-centered fixation on being an outsider that leads to a serious betrayal of those around her.

, and the way the film leaves open the possibility of interpretation makes it an ideal festival entry. Søimer Guttormsen and Larsen first began exploring this character in the 2016 short “Retrett,” which is likely why Gritt feels so fully-formed,...