Norwegian Animation ‘Pesta’ Brings the Black Plague to Cannes Frontières Platform (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comMarta Balaga Norwegian animation “Pesta,” directed by Hanne Berkaak, will head to the Frontières Platform in May. Directed at genre film professionals, the event is organized by the Fantasia International Film Festival with the Cannes’ Marché du Film.
The film, set in 1349 during the outbreak of the Black Plague, will see two teenagers, Astrid and Eilev, fighting for their forbidden love among the apocalypse as Astrid, a nobleman’s daughter, struggles with her growing desire for “the outcast heathen.” Granted development funding from the Norwegian Film Institute, “Pesta” is produced by Mikrofilm’s Tonje Skar Reiersen and Lise Fearnley.
It’s also named after a shadowy figure from Norwegian folklore, a personification of the plague itself. “She was depicted as an old woman travelling from farm to farm, carrying a rake and a broom.
Where she used her rake, some would survive. Where she swept her broom, everyone would die. Dark stuff,” said producer Tonje Skar Reiersen. “Theodor Kittelsen [one of the most popular artists in Norway] has drawn and painted some really uncanny pictures of her that scared the life out of generations of Norwegian children.” Despite its historical setting, the film is bound to hit differently after the world’s struggles with COVID. “I actually got this idea during the pandemic.
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