Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2016: #55. Sara Johnsen’s Framing Mom

Framing Mom

Director: Sara Johnsen
Writer: Sara Johnsen

Norwegian director Sara Johnsen has yet to secure US distribution for her previous three features, including her award winning debut Kissed By Winter (2005), Upperdog (2009), and the enigmatic All That Matters Is Past (2012), which unfortunately didn’t find the critical praise it was worthy of. Offbeat and strange, it’s easy to see why her cinema has had a difficult time securing an international audience, so we’re hoping her next feature, Framing Mom, breaks out of this cycle. This is about the story of Unn Tove, a TV journalist who marries the wrong man and is unfaithful to him at their own wedding. At the same time, a newborn baby, Rose Marie, is left in a restaurant bathroom. Their lives become intertwined, and 16 years later, Unn Tove and Rose Marie begin a search for the young girl’s biological parents.

Cast: Tuva Novotny, Jesper Christiansen, Emil Johnsen

Production Co./Producer(s): 4 ½ Fiksjon’s Turid Oversveen (The Sleepwalker), Nimbus Film, The Match Factory

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. TBD (domestic) Piffel Median (Germany).

Release Date: We originally thought Johnsen may have been finished in time for a Fall 2015 release, which was not the case. 2012’s All That Matters is Past went to TIFF, but we’re wondering if we won’t see her latest pop up sooner, potentially at a Cannes sidebar or maybe in Karlovy Vary in July.