NEON announced today that it has acquired U.S. rights to The Worst Person in The World from Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier (Reprise, Oslo, August 31st, Thelma).
The film marks the final part of Trier’s Oslo Trilogy, which started with Reprise in 2006 and continued with Oslo, August 31st in 2011.
The script was co-written by Trier with regular collaborator Eskil Vogt and the film stars Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum, Hans Olav Brenner, Helene Bjøreby, and Vidar Sandem.
The Worst Person in The World is a modern romantic comedy about the quest for love and meaning in contemporary Oslo.
It chronicles four years in the life of Julie (Reinsve), a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, leading her to take a realistic look at who she really is.
In the film, Julie is turning 30 and her life is an existential mess. Several of her talents have gone to waste and her older boyfriend, Aksel — a successful graphic novelist — is pushing for them to settle down.
One night, she gatecrashes a party and meets the young and charming Eivind. Before long, she has broken up with Aksel and thrown herself into yet another new relationship, hoping for a new perspective on her life. But she will come to realize that some life choices are already behind her.
“For a long time I have wanted to make a film about love. One that goes a bit deeper than normal onscreen love stories, where everything is so simple, the stories so clearcut, the feelings so admirably unambiguous,” said Trier.
“A film that will look seriously at the difficulties of meeting someone when you’re struggling to figure out your own life; at how irresolute and uncertain even the most rational and otherwise self-confident people can become when they fall in love; and how complicated it is, even for romantics, when they actually get what they have been dreaming about.”
Jeff Deutchman negotiated the deal for NEON with Fionnuala Jamison from mk2 Films.
The film is produced by Oslo Pictures, mk2 Productions, Film I Väst, Snowglobe, B-Reel with Thomas Robsahm, Andrea Berentsen Ottmar serving as producers and executive produced by Dyveke Bjørkly Graver, Tom Erik Kjeseth, Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier.
The Worst Person in the World currently sits at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes with critics calling the film “laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreaking” and “quick, vibrant, pulsing.”
NEON premiered three titles at Cannes this year, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton, Julia Ducournau’s Titane, and the anthology feature, The Year of the Everlasting Storm. You can view trailers for those films here as well.