Gry-Jeanette is a nonconformist. Gritt, as she calls herself, doesn’t move to the same drum as those around her. She’s a square peg in a round hole and in Norwegian society, that forces her to be a lone wolf — an outsider.

In her debut feature ‘Gritt’ filmmaker Itonje Søimer Guttormsen, with the help of leading actress Birgitte Larsen, makes Gritt the perfect anti-heroine we will all aspire to be, once we’ve managed to watch her quiet masterpiece.

Because Gritt, and I suspect her filmmaker and interpreter as well, possesses a quiet strength, an inner courage we need in these modern times. Although ‘Gritt’ was filmed before the current pandemic, there is a freedom and carefreeness within the film that melted my heart. In fact, days after viewing it, ‘Gritt’ remains deeply planted within it, the vision of the filmmaker providing inspiration and the interpretation of her leading lady coloring my thoughts.

That said, it would be difficult for me to write a proper review of the film. Little of the story of Gry-Jeanette, and her struggles to find her path in a society that requires her to conform before providing comfort and assistance have been processed in my head. My love for the film is a wonderfully liberating instinctual thing, based on feelings and images that simply exist now within me. And it doesn’t feel like they’ll ever go away.

But as a journalist, I’m lucky. I get to interview the filmmakers and through their words, I can provide an insight into their process — while also letting them explain my feelings about their work to me. It’s exactly what happened with the wonderful Itonje Søimer Guttormsen, a filmmaker and artist based in Oslo, whose previous short film ‘Retrett’ screened in 2016 provided a cinematic introduction to Gritt’s fascinating character.

Following is our chat, made possible by one of my favorite publicist who trusted us enough to let us speak, via Zoom of course, about anything and everything. The result feels like the beginning of a beautiful friendship, as the old film line goes, and it provides a perfect roadmap to not only navigating ‘Gritt’ — a must watch! — but also finding our feet in today’s strange new world.

After premiering in the Tromsø International Film Festival earlier this month, the film will screen in the Virtual Cinema at the International Film Festival Rotterdam — which runs from the 1st to the 7th of February, 2021.

Your film portrays a sort of female anti-heroine. She is not exactly the leading lady we are used to seeing in film and yet she is such an incredible character. I was watching your short and realized that part of the inspiration for this character came from ‘Retrett’ which in turn was a collaboration with Birgitte Larsen, your actress. Can you talk a bit about how both those projects came about?

Itonje Søimer Guttormsen: It all started in 2007 when I was in film school. Birgitte Larsen who plays the lead she acted in one of my short films there. Already I’d been interested in this kind of lonesome wolf-ish characters, female characters who were active but also very alienated by their surroundings. And I found she portrayed that with a sense of humor that I hadn’t seen before so I was immediately inspired to work with her more. And then we met, almost by accident again in 2009 — both of us were out of relationships, out of film school and we were very open and we started to work together. 

We went to New York and did a kind of hybrid documentary there just to explore and to stay in NY [laughs]. Whatever we did, this character just came through. She wanted to be made… Then Birgitte became Gritt with this short film I made ‘Retrett’. The idea of the feature film or even the ideology of a feature film came in 2009 and I knew that Birgitte was going to be in it. I do the writing, we don’t collaborate in that sense but since we are close friends and have been collaborating often, I know so much about her — what lives in her. So the Gritt character is something happening outside the two of us — it’s a third person who wouldn’t have existed without her. 

So Birgitte is a bit of a muse?

Itonje: In a way, but again, she’s very different from Gritt, I might be more like Gritt than her. But then she’s such a good observer, she is so good at watching and portraying so it’s a synthesis and then some.

Is the story autobiographical?

Itonje: I play with reality. It’s my fiction in a way but it’s also taking from the characters in my life. I give and take. It’s not autobiographical — it doesn’t have anything to do with my story but it’s all collected from around me. 

I would find it difficult to write about your film without speaking with you. Most of what I learned in your film lives on in my heart, not in my head. There is this one theme I picked up which is the idea that one needs to be a bit insane to be creative. Can you talk about what being creative means to you?

Itonje: I’m glad you’re pointing to that. Definitely, insanity and creativity go well together. I believe you have to be a bit insane to create. The more vulnerable you are, the more sensitive you are and probably are able to pick up on vibes — both concrete ones and more abstract vibes, even spiritual vibes. I think maybe being an artist is a great outlet for that perception and often the life of an artist or someone working with culture in general, like the freelance life, is very suited for people who are more sensitive, vulnerable but also strange or a bit mad — but also rich in their inner life. 

The normality of having a steady job, etc. is maybe not a good place to be. I think more people should be artists, not necessarily career artists but to allow themselves to create and roam and think and ponder and make stuff happen. And in that sense be in contact with their impression of being alive. For many people that can be quite overwhelming and if you don’t have an outlet for it, you might be mad or sick I guess.

It’s interesting because the words you’ve used can also be applied to someone whose inner child is very developed. There is something very childlike about Gritt, what is attractive about her — she doesn’t think twice about doing things. Your film supplies great definitions of what the artist is. Were you aware you were creating a sort of cinematic definition of the artistic soul?

Itonje: Yes and no — I think, because for me to be able to survive myself as an artist and a person I really needed to find my own way to navigate in the whole system of both school and the film industry. Some of the actions in the movie are taken from my own life and my own struggles all those years before I managed to make something that people managed to comprehend. This extremely frustrating and desperate situation of not being able to express yourself — you have all this that you wish to say but it’s not really coming out or people are not interested — that’s like the crisis in the film. 

I just had to make it [the movie]. To kind of justify myself and to heal something. 

How much time passed between ‘Retrett’ your short, and ‘Gritt’?

Itonje: Almost five years and I was working with the film the whole time but also did a Masters where I wrote about this process. It took me quite a while to be able to finance and attract the right producers etc. To be able to make the feature film. That’s been my struggle the whole time to be able to make films in my way, my special way and to be as explorative and intuitive as I find necessary. To actually make something authentic for me. That has been very difficult in the very rigid film system, I find. I had to really fight to have the trust from the [Norwegian] Film Institute. I started by filming in NY on my own money, because I no one would support a debutante feature filmmaker making a film in NY and then I got the first funding myself and then Mer Film came along. But this is still a low budget film. 

I have to admit that to me, Gritt is a real fashionista! Something that becomes incredibly apparent in the end — I won’t give the reason why away… Can you talk about how you came up with those beautiful vibrant clothes and who helped you with the costume design?

Itonje: I’m so glad you’ve asked me about this! No one has asked this question and I’ve been burning to talk about it. When you’re that type of person, when you have no other structure around you, you don’t even have a home, the way you dress yourself can be your shelter. And Gritt is very sensitive so she dresses up for every situation. She’s kind of a chameleon. She has clothes that she juggles for every occasion. Throughout she becomes more free, and streetwise and her clothes match that….

And that blue leather motorcycle suit!

Itonje: That’s really her armor! She definitely needs that to be able to stand at that moment — once she leaves her luggage in the station and kind of leaves everything behind and goes into the woods. Also there she finds the leftover clothes of her aunt and sawing gear and the woods… She already has this within her to take things and transform into her surroundings but this becomes really a part of her cleansing and re-discovering herself. She even transforms a part of the motorcycle suit to make it softer. 

In the beginning we worked on the costumes ourselves with Birgitte. But I hired an artist and close friend Marianne Stranger to do the clothing in the woods. We went to the Venice Biennale together in the summer and just took inspiration and had this whole vision. We knew what Gritt was going through, what she was collecting from and then we worked within the process, going out in the woods at different seasons — and for each time we had to live it. We didn’t draw it out, we made it there. It was so much fun. 

What would you like viewers to take away from your film, what is the basic message for you? And has that changed in the last year, as our lives have changed so much from this pandemic?

Itonje: What I want and it’s what I always wanted is to emphasize our need to realize that we are different. That we need a lot of space to discover that different-ness. Especially in Norway, it’s all very “homogenic” [editor’s note: I haven’t changed the word because if you google it, it will explain exactly what the filmmaker means and it’s a wonderful word!] — we have our social democracy, it’s all taken care of in a way. But if you’re off that grid and need to be like free, and you need not to have family or need to for some reason lead a different life, that’s hard. You don’t find a lot of inspiration to help you take life by its uterus and go and embrace it. So I really hope this film can help people question themselves — “Am I free enough, do I take chances enough and do I give my fellow humans enough space?” “Do I judge those who live in a different way? Do I judge them as being irrational or insane?”

I hope people will feel that and also I hope they will feel inspired and empowered to go out and be adventurous and be flexible and be hopeful, in these times when I don’t think we need to protect ourselves and be safe. What we are doing with this virus, of course, and climate change of course, it’s a natural impulse to try to be safe but I think there is a huge ‘DANGER! DANGER!” blinking sign there so we have to be really really careful of not shutting down on life. Because life is aaaah-mazing! And the world is amazing and there is so much outside our reality — which is more and more screen based and less and less magical. 

I hope people will be a bit disturbed and think about this. 

For more information about ‘Gritt’ visit the filmmaker’s website. For IFFR, check out their Virtual Cinema program here.