The Play of Everyman

The country is locked down during the corona pandemic and a lonely woman fantasizes about a brand new neighbor she has not yet met.

Emanuel's identity is unknown, and his life has been put on hold for eight years. He claims to be from Liberia, but the Norwegian authorities believes he's from Ghana. He can't be returned to a country he's not registered in.

Roza's song gives a unique insight into the Norwegian-Romanian community. The film follows Roza's dream of making the Norwegian-Romanian community's first CD.

Civil Disobedience takes you along when three generations of activists from Extinction Rebellion and Just Stopp Oil change their tactics from actions against jet fuel to roadblocks and “attacks” on famous artworks and sports events. This observational documentary invites you behind the scenes of direct actions, and emotional and strategic reconsiderations. It gives you insight into the motivation of the actions as activists are prosecuted and taken to court. When the police move in, the filmmaker himself is arrested while cameras are rolling. An intense and empathic depiction of the here-and-now of the activists, the film also offers a larger perspective: What drives ordinary people into using civil disobedience and taking on the state and corporate powers to fight the climate emergency?

Things is an attempt to approach the world without filling it up with preconceived ideas and purposes. An attempt to film things, without reducing them into mere means to build a story or statement. Things is on one hand a series of seemingly objective recordings without subject or superstructure, on the other hand it is Østbye’s most intimate and personal work, with no official theme or story to hide behind.

In 'Out of Norway' Emanuel (from Imagining Emanuel 2011) is refused to travel from Norway back to Liberia. So now he must flee again - in the other direction! Follow his video diary, and you will see that it is not as simple as it seems.

The documentary film HUMAN study what’s human – out of context. Without familiar purposes and surroundings, the film plays our labeling instinct against the factual meeting with another person. How close can we get to another human before it gets inhuman, – or maybe too human?