After twenty year as an actress, Tova Novotny debut as a feature film director with two diametrically different projects. A wide family film based on a bestselling novel – and a contemporary drama that is so dark that se warn the audience to watch it.

Text: Erik Eje Almqvist
Photo: Carla Orrego Veliz

It was night in London, spring 2016. Tuva Novotny was in a hotel room in Kensington. She had just finished a evening production for Annihilation, Alex Garland’s existential science fiction-film where she played against Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh. New recordings awaited the next day, but instead of going to bed, Tuva Novotny sat down infront of her computer.

During her twenty year career, she has managed everything from Swedish soaps to Danish indie films to international major productions. Slightly in the dark, she has also directed a few episodes of the Norwegian TV- series Dag och Lilyhammer. Though, she has never filmed or written any projects of her own.

– But to be awake late at night can make you get other thoughts in your head, she says. The stillness gives peace to articulate oneself.  Anyhow there, at the hotel room, I started to write a manuscript.

Blind spot. 

The inspiration came from a period a few years back, when one of Tuva’s closest friends had been mentally ill.

– I didn’t know how I would act. Like many others, I thought that you shouldn’t force yourself on people who are experiencing something difficult. When I brought it up with my therapist, she explained that all researched showed the opposite. You should burst the bubble and ask those questions that feel over the line. Do you feel bad? Are you suicidal? It sounds really pretentious, but for me it was an existential oh-experience. I started to interest myself in research and studied Norwegian suicide case.

When the sun rised over Queen’s Gate outside the hotel window, she ad written the framework for a film manuscript. The storyline surrounded a family who’s everyday life is turned into chaos when the teenage daughter suddenly tries to take her life.

Tuva left the keyboard and called the cinematographer Jonas Alarik.

“What do you say about this”, she asked. “Could it become a film?”

The director Ulf Malmros suckar. He wants to correct the official image of Tuva Novotny.

– Since she never have let journalists inside, they have misunderstood her as a friend and serious, almost pretentious. It is the last thing she is. She is cheerful and funny. Smart as hell! It is hell of life in that person.

Malmros met Novotny 16 years ago when he gave her the main role in Smala Sussie. 

– We had barely had time to talk properly when we were suppose to shoot a scene without any lines, where she was supposed to be high and sit down in a car and burn off. Silence, take, I looked in the monitorn – and hell she was loose! A film star. Then the scene was over, and out walked a common 22 year old värmlänning. It is one of those injustices in life. Football talent, talent, musicality. Some people just have it.

According to Malmros, she was already a director’s subject back then.

– Some of the biggest actors can make a scene, and then ask where the camera is. Many become actors just to fill some kind of vacuum. You can through herrings at them as if they were seals on Skansen, but they are never content. Tuva’s determination is the contrast to being self-centered. Every time the other went to the cafeteria, she stayed over my shoulder and wanted to learn how you arrange the camera and edit.

Over the years, Novotny have had opportunities to look over the shoulder of skilled directors like Daniel Alfredson, Tobias Lindholm, Simon Staho, Charlotte Sach Bostrup…

As soon as Tuva Novotny finished the manuscript, she sent it to several experts within mental illness who ensured that the development was depicted as authentically as possible.

They shared Tuva’s idea that the film industry usually treats suicide in a problematic way.

– One romanticise and dramatise in a way that is the complete opposite to the research for suicide prevention.

To avoid the same trap, she made an early decision.

– Editing is a strong tool narratively, and since I didn’t want to dramatise, I came to the conclusion that the film had to be recorded in real time, without cuts. I trusted that the plot had enough relevance and substance to carry the film. Why would I then add more enforcing elements? I didn’t want any cuts, no make up, no music.

Ever since Blind Spot had premiered in Haugesund last summer, it has been drained in awards and tributes for it’s steady way. A lot have focused on how the lack of editing have created an almost claustrophobic presence.

Other films who are recorded in one take, is usually set in one room, with a limited amount of actors. In Blind Spot, you move between different locations, and shift focus between a variety of different people.

-No one knew if it would work to record a film in that way. But I was convinced that it would work. For the actors, it was really no difference to a theater play. The crew had to work in a relay of shorter sequences. We made a rehearsal. Then we shot the entire film three times over three days. Now, when you watch the film, you see an uninterrupted sequence from the first take, but we have actually made an overlap between a hand camera and a steadicam when Pia Tjelta sits down in the car.

During the launch of the film, Tuva Novotny met the press together with one of the specialists on emergency psychiatry who has fact checked the manuscript. Then, they used the interviews to tell about the research in the area.

– A goal with the film is to change the public discourse on mental illness, which often is characterized by guilt rather than openness. I believe that we should create a conversation climate at home where you can ask: Do you feel ill? We have to show that it is normal to have heavy thoughts. Because it can end badly if you dant talk about it.

Britt-Marie was here.

People have already noticed the irony in Novotny’s dark and artistically driven debut is followed up by a film with considerably wider take. The expectations on the film adaption of Fredrik Backman’s best selling novel Britt-Marie was here, after the big success with the film adaption of the writer’s A Man Called Ove. The narrative surrounds a 63-year old Britt Marie, played by Pernilla August, who reveal her husband’s affair and starts a new life with a football coach to a youth team in a sleepy small town.

– It is diametrically different films! That meant completely different challenges. With Blind Spot we knew exactly what kind of films we wanted to make. With Britt-Marie was here there were no manuscript, we only had the book. Many writers was involved working without really getting it right. Finally, I wrote most of it of my own with help from Anders August and Øystein Karlsen. I find it often difficult to identify with Swedish films, and believe that they have too much distance from its characters. Now when we finally shall she a 63-year old woman as a main character in a feature film, I wanted us to be able to identify ourselves with her.

There are several examples of the actors ambition to direct that neither have lead to harmonious job environments nor artistic full points. Although those who have worked under Tuva Novotny testifies on a friction free and equal process.

-The crew on Britt- Marie said: “We only wait for the day when you should bend to the pressure and lose it.” But I don’t see it as pressuring. Some directors are only focused on personal chemistry. Others are very technical. I see it more as if you are a conductor or a mother who creates frames to the others. If I do it, I don’t feel like performing a lot myself.”

Blind spot is screened on  30/1 and  2/2. Read more