North (Nord)

Year: 2009
Country: NORWAY
Run Time: 79 minutes

And you complain about Cleveland's winters. In this ultimate off-road movie, Jomar journeys 1,100 kilometers alone, on a snowmobile, across the frozen tundra north of the Arctic Circle. Jomar used to be a contender. He was a championship skier with a loving girlfriend. Then an accident triggered an existential crisis, and now he lives alone in a hut atop a snowy ski hill. Swigging booze and gulping pills, he's the kind of no-future guy who looks forward to Tunnel Disaster Week on the National Geographic Channel. One night, just as the program starts, Johan burns his hut down by mistake. There's nowhere to go but the road, so he boards his ancient snowmobile with a 5-liter container of moonshine and undergoes an arduous journey NORTH to find his girlfriend and the child he's never met. En route, Jomar meets an eccentric cast of isolated loners, ranging from a teenage girl, to the Norwegian military on maneuvers, to an ancient ice fisherman living in a tent. "The ice broke on the water," one woman cracks, "Must be the global warming everybody's talking about." As Jomar continues on his weird expedition, it seems like he's heading in the right direction. (In Norwegian with subtitles) – B.B.

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