“RIOT” THE OPENING NIGHT SELECTION AT 2024 SCANDINAVIAN FILM FESTIVAL
OFFICIAL SELECTION – 2024 GÖTEBORG FILM FESTIVAL
From award-winning director Nils Gaup (The Last King, Pathfinder), THE RIOT is a grand historical drama based on true events, following a teenager whose desire to reunite with his family forces him prematurely into a man’s world: the pre-unionised copper mines of Northern Norway.
Late 1890s. When her husband dies, a young Swedish mother makes the heartbreaking decision to send her son away to Norway to work as a farmhand, so she may care for his younger sister. The boy, Konrad Nilsson (a terrific Otto Fahlgren), spends his childhood labouring, dreaming of earning enough to return home.
1907. Sulitjelma. Konrad finds work as a miner to the scepticism of the older, tougher colleagues he will join for the dangerous underground work. It’s the wild west of the Nordic countries: the mining company, Norway’s second largest employer at the time, controls all the land in the area – including seven separate prospecting sites – and sets the rules with a private police force. When a new Swedish foreman Wennström (Simon J Berger) arrives, he takes a liking to Konrad and offers him an opportunity to advance. But as Wennström’s demands to increase the mine’s production pace grow increasingly perilous, tensions rise and the workers meet in secret to organise a strike. However, there are informants within the crew and with revolt looming, Konrad finds himself caught in the middle…
A powerful film about the dream of a better life, the compromises and exploitation of capitalism, trust and the fight for justice, THE RIOT plays out in the isolated snow-capped wilds under the Northern lights, against the backdrop of one of Norway’s most tumultuous, nation-defining events.
