Olga Krüssenberg, who graduated with a master’s degree in fine arts from the Royal Institute of Art in 2024, has been awarded 400 000 SEK for a feature film project about Svalbard, and – what the jury describes as – “a person’s struggle to find belonging in a place where the future has never been more uncertain”. Together with filmmaker Balder Ljunggren, she has been selected for the Swedish Film Institute’s Wild Card program, where newly graduated directors receive development support to quickly get started with their feature film debuts. The winners share the award of 800 000 SEK to develop their film projects.
The jury consists of film consultants and controllers at the Film Institute’s production support unit. The motivation for Olga Krüssenberg’s film Late Blue Winter reads:
“With the documentary film’s ear for reality and a disarming cinematic playfulness, this versatile director returns to a Svalbard in dramatic transformation. The new project follows a young Russian man in exile, driven out of his orbit by a Europe that does not want him. Svalbard becomes his refuge, which, with the director’s sure hand, is chiseled out from the protagonist’s perspective as a kind of Wild West. The jury looks forward to following the development of a visually stunning, charming and wistful story about one man’s struggle to find belonging in a place where the future has never been more uncertain.”
At the Royal Institute of Art’s graduation exhibition, held at the Academy of Fine Arts this summer, Olga Krüssenberg showed her work Coastline – a video installation that introduces the viewer to different aspects of Svalbard.
Her previous short documentaries Slowly I Move in Your Direction and Ice Blink have been screened at national and international film festivals and art exhibitions in the Nordic countries.